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V 


THE 


SUNDAY QUESTION 

OR 

THE LORD’S DAY 

ITS 

SACREDNESS, PERMANENCE, AND VALUE 

AS SHOWN BY ITS 


ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND USE. 

BY 3/ to to 


S. Edward Warren, C. E. 

Formerly Professor in the Rens. Polytechnic Inst., Fellow A. A. A. S., etc. 


. . . The Sabbath days: which are a shadcnu of things to 
come, but the body is of Christ. — Col. ii: 16, 17. 


BOSTON: 

JAMES H. EARLE, PUBLISHER, 
178 Washington Street. 

1890. 




Copyright, 1890. 

By James II. Earle. 

All rights reserved. 




To ths MBinnry 


OF THB 


DEAR HOME IN WHICH, FROM EARLIEST RECOLLECTION, 

miu aorfc's Dag 


WAS, AS NOW, MORE AND MORE FELT TO BE THE 

11 Day of all the week the best” 

This Volume is Reverently Dedicated 

IN HONOR OF HIS FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN PARENTS, 

BY THEIR SON, 


The Author, 



PREFACE 


The object of this work is to promote an intelli- 
gent understanding, appreciation, and love of the Lord’s 
Day. 

Mindful that a preface, like a lens, should enable 
one to see much through a small medium, I only 
wish here to define the position of this volume among 
others on the same subject. 

To the question: Why do, or should, we keep the 
Lord’s Day? four answers have been given. 

1. Because Natural Religion favors it. 

2. Because the Fourth Commandment demands it. 

3. Because the Church orders it. 

4. Because the New Testament indicates and exem¬ 
plifies it. 

Each of these answers has truth in it. Regarded 
doctrinally , the specific object of this volume is, while 
recognizing and adopting all of present useful truth 
in the three former, to show that the immediate ground 
for the Christian keeping of Sunday holy, under the 
name of the Lord’s Day, and in distinction from a 
merely useful and agreeable civil or social institution 



6 


PREFACE. 


on the one hand, or on the other, an essentially 
Jewish seventh-day sabbath is found in the words and 
deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles, 
witnessed to by the Primitive Church. Accordingly, 
the different divisions of the subject have been treat¬ 
ed in the order of their immediate importance, rela¬ 
tive to present duty, rather than in chronological or¬ 
der, and hence the New Testament teaching has been 
put foremost. 

Regarded historically , justice to all times and par¬ 
ties has been sought by giving what is believed to 
be fairly representative testimony from each. As the 
strength and permanence of political parties attests 
the reality of the nation which contains them, and 
their devotion to it, so the same qualities, in parties 
on the question of the Lord’s Day, indicate the reality 
and importance of the day. The following pages 
have, therefore, not been written with controversial 
intent, in such allusions to parties as have seemed 
unavoidable, but, rather, in the hope of exhibiting the 
unity of Christian sentiment as deeper and more con¬ 
trolling than its variety, and of uniting all, yet more 
fully, in an intelligent, reverent, and cherishing appre¬ 
ciation of the Lord’s Day, as the “first and best of 
days.” 

Regarded practically, this work is not a *>1lection 
of rules for the proper observance, of the Nord’s 
Day, but seeks to make an exhibition, brief, yJt be¬ 
lieved to be sufficient, of its transcendent benefits to 





PREFACE. 7 


mankind; and it is hoped that some of the consid* 
erations in Chapter VIII may, among other ends, 
serve to give peace to such troubled souls as may 
chance to read them, as have heretofore known gov¬ 
ernment more as a hard master than as a protector, 
and religion, more as priestcraft than as the revela¬ 
tion of God’s beneficent love to man. 

It is hoped #hat whatever of repetition may be 
found, will not be thought needless or tedious, but 
necessary to proper insistence upon important truth, 
or as showing the convergence of different lines of 
argument towards a common conclusion. 

While it has been the purpose not to divert the 
attention of readers and weary them with too many 
foot-notes, it is believed that every statement is suf¬ 
ficiently supported by comprehensive general refer¬ 
ences to authorities, if not by specific ones. The lat¬ 
ter, however, are numerous. 

Finally, while the extent of the literature of the sub¬ 
ject leaves small opportunity for any thing strikingly 
original in discussing it, yet the time that has been 
spent, at longer or shorter intervals, for several years, 
in the preparation of this volume, has resulted in such 
a plan of treatment, and in such a number of points 
not met with by the author elsewhere, as will, he 
hopes, make the subject as interesting as it is im¬ 
portant, and his work a contribution to the best wel¬ 
fare and lasting happiness of his fellow-countrymen. 

Newton , Mass. 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 


PAGE 

The Lord’s Day and Some General 

Principles. 9 

The Lord’s Day in the Gospels . . 27 

The Lord’s Day and the Apostles . 42 

The Lord’s Day and the Church 

Idea.59 

The Lord’s Day in the Primitive 

Church.77 

The Lord’s Day in the Middle Ages 104 

The Lord’s Day in Modern Times . 118 

The Lord’s Day in Relation to Man 

and Nature.168 

The Lord’s Day and the Sabbath in 

the New Testament.220 

The Lord’s Day and the Fourth 

Commandment.243 

The Lord’s Day and a Primeval 

Sabbath.. . . 277 










V 


The Sunday Question. 


chapter i. 

THE LORD’S DAY, AND SOME GENERAL 
PRINCIPLES. 


“ The things which are seen are temporal; but the things 
which are not seen are eternal 2 Cor. iv: 18. 

“ To every thing there is a season, and a time to every pur¬ 
pose under the heavens Eccles, iii: i. 



l HIS age is so excellently well up in practical 


1 knowledge of many material things, — food, 
clothing, shelter, air, light, heat, rest, and motion — 
that concern this present life, that the more is the 
pity, if it be found not equally advanced in wisdom 
concerning the invisible and immaterial, yet even 
more real, things of the mind and soul. A refined 
and withal deep thinker, lecturing on “ Show and 
Substance,” eloquently and elegantly set forth by 
various arguments and illustrations, that a fruitful 
thought is as truly a substance as is a mass of rock. 
It is so in the truest, deepest, best sense of being 
something imperishable and influential. For exam- 



IO 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


pie, the thought that liberty is a tree of gradual 
growth, brought to perfection by the long and dili¬ 
gent cultivation of centuries, has made the fabric of 
English liberty, mostly unscarred by bloody, violent, 
and even convulsive and destructive revolutions. 
The thought that liberty is something that can be 
made at a given time and place, and according to a 
preconceived pattern, gave the world the liberty-de¬ 
stroying French revolution. A host of other illus¬ 
trations, which each can make for himself, will show 
the same thing. Thoughts being thus powers in 
life, the distinct provision of a time for undistracted 
thought is a priceless blessing, an indispensable ne¬ 
cessity, indeed, for healthy and happy existence. 

Time and space are the underlying conditions of 
all human action. The word : I have no time for it, 
or no room for it, is decisive that it can not be done, 
or had. The word : I will, or I want to, do it, or get 
it, when I have time for it, or room for it, expresses 
each one’s vision, or hope, of something better to 
come. 

The time-absorbing, space-grasping world, with its 
ten thousand appeals to the senses, and with its lust 
for gain, would take all our time, and would make us 
forget that there was any other life than the present. 
Hence the divine and tender wisdom of the word of 
the “Father of Lights,” “from whom cometh every 
good and every perfect gift,” saying : “ Love not the 
world, neither the things that are in the world,” that 
is, as if there were no other. 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


II 


But the merciful provision of the Lord’s Day, the 
rest-day God made for man, gives us, then, both time 
and space, of which nothing may rightfully rob us, in 
which, along with bodily rest and refreshing “ change 
of scene,” to hear, read, and think of those highest, 
brightest, and best things, which purify and ennoble 
all life, just because they concern us as immortal 
beings. 

Let us, then, readers and friends, sit down and 
reason together in the following pages, concerning the 
sacredness, permanence, and value, as shown by its 
origin, history, and uses, of the day of which it may 
so well be said : “This is the day which the Lord 
hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” 

“What Mean ye by This Service?” Ex. xii: 26. 

Suppose, now, an intelligent stranger from far away 
were to land on our shores just before the Fourth of 
July, and that he should ask the meaning of all he 
might see of preparation and celebration. What an¬ 
swer would any intelligent citizen, or even school-boy, 
give him ? 

He might be asked, first, if he had ever seen, or 
heard of, either among his own people, or any others, 
any national festivals ; and, second, if he had ever 
known of a long and generally observed festival, 
founded on nothing, kept in honor of no person or 
event, and signifying nothing more than a general 
desire for a holiday, with no particular reason for 
keeping it at one time rather than another. 



12 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


We can easily enough believe, first, that our visitor 
would have found no people without some permanent 
sacred or secular festival or memorial days; and, 
second, that he, and all who heard him, would be im¬ 
pressed with a new realization of the fact that no such 
thing could be found as a long-continued and wide¬ 
spread observance, in memory or honor of nothing, or 
signifying nothing of special or lasting interest. 

With curiosity and readiness to learn, sharpened by 
reflections like these, our friend would eagerly hear, 
and probably never forget, the story of our colonies 
and of their well-grounded discontents ; of their vain 
efforts to have their reasonable wishes granted; of 
the exhaustion of their patience, and of their solemn 
appeal to arms, and to the decision of heaven, in be¬ 
half of a declaration of their independence, published 
to all the world. In a word, he could understand that 
a great nation was celebrating its own birth-day; that 
the testimony of many living witnesses showed that it 
had been doing so on every annual return of the day, 
as long as the oldest of them could remember; and 
that some of their elders had heard of the same as 
handed down from their fathers, back to the original 
day in 1776. 

Yet there is one point more that might occur to the 
mind of our friend. He might say, “ I perceive that 
you have among you many laws, commanding or for¬ 
bidding a multitude of things; and I see that you 
have courts to try offenders, and prisons in which to 
confine the guilty. Where is the law that secures 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


13 


this universal observance of the Fourth of July, 
that I see, and how many and strict are its pro¬ 
visions to secure such universal obedience as I 
witness?” But, again, he could easily understand 
what every one could tell him, viz., that there were 
sometimes stronger motives and promptings to action 
than could be derived from any written law, whatever 
its commands, or sanctions, or threatenings, might 
be. He would be everywhere eloquently and con¬ 
vincingly told that the spontaneous love of the people 
for their country, and their pride and joy in its 
glory and prosperity, were such a guaranty of the 
perpetual celebration of its origin, as could be derived 
from no other source ; and that a written law, formally 
commanding the observance of the nation’s birth-day, 
would be as superfluous as would be one command¬ 
ing a man to cherish his own life, defend his own 
possessions, or provide for his own children. 

Suppose, now, that our visitor were an intelligent 
pagan, and that he were next to turn his inquiries 
from political to religious observances, and to ask 
questions concerning the meaning of the term, 
“ Lord’s Day,” which day, under that or other 
names, he would so often hear mentioned, and see 
observed in a different manner from other days. By 
as much as eighteen centuries are more than one 
century; aye, more : by as much as eternal interests 
are more than temporal ones, and by as much as love 
is better than law, he would be eagerly told that the 
Lord’s Day is the name which has always been given 



H 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


by Christians to the first day of the week, and freely 
and gladly observed by them in memory of the Resur¬ 
rection of Jesus Christ, the Founder of their reli¬ 
gion. 

Taking as a point of departure the principles— 
which we believe to be sound and reasonable ones— 
contained in the foregoing replies to our supposed 
visitor, we shall make primary, distinctively Chris¬ 
tian times, grounds , and ways of keeping one day in 
the week as a day of worship and holy rest, and all 
other times, grounds, and ways of such action second¬ 
ary, whether founded on natural or revealed religion; 
on the law of Nature and conscience, or the law of 
the Patriarchal or Jewish dispensations. All these 
latter may afford instructive guiding indications, 
pointings forward, and analogies; but the immediate 
ground for the distinctively Christian day should be 
found within the Christian system . 

In thus defining our starting point and line of pro¬ 
gress, it is with the hope of aiding, as we proceed, in 
the rescue of the Lord’s Day, “ the first and best of 
days,'’ from confusion, and thence from abuse and 
neglect. In other words, we would help to rescue 
the day both from misuse and disuse; and hence, 
finally, in so doing, would promote its observance, 
not as a burden grievous to be borne, but as a heav¬ 
enly gift and blessing, which no man, or the world, 
can afford to lose. 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES . 


IS 


Methods of Proof. 

Such being our object, and such our fundamental 
conception of the Lord’s Day as a distinctively Chris¬ 
tian institution, we may consider the radically differ¬ 
ent methods of treatment to be pursued with corre¬ 
spondingly different classes of persons. 

To unquestioning followers of Christ, his teach¬ 
ing, whether immediately from himself, or mediate, 
through his inspired apostles, is final. 

To professed believers in natural religion, only, 
who may say that the teaching and example of Christ 
and his apostles are no more to them than those of 
any other recognized leaders and reformers—and 
who, in argument, must be taken at their word—a 
laborious application of' the method of induction 
would be necessary. That is, the testimony of all 
sorts and conditions of men must be gathered, and 
of men in all times, places, and pursuits, as to the 
effects of keeping a periodical day of rest, and it 
must be in such amount as to indicate a natural law 
for such observance. Moreover, it should be in the 
same manner reasonably established that the day 
of rest should recur weekly. 

Yet, after all this tedious labor, only a greater or 
less degree of probability, never, perhaps, amounting 
to a satisfying, or still less to a compelling certainty, 
could be thus obtained. It would also seem that no 
very high degree of probability could be obtained at 
an early stage of man’s history; while, in the mean 



16 


THE SUNDA V QUESTION. 


time, mankind might be suffering both for lack of 
a knowledge of the truth on the subject, and by 
thence losing his capacity for and interest in discover 
ing it. 

From this natural yet dismal picture of the finite 
creature, without a revelation from his Infinite Crea¬ 
tor, who, in such a case, could hardly be appropri¬ 
ately called his loving Father, we turn to a happier 
vision, — that of the natural union of these different 
methods. 

No free, intelligent, and active spirit likes to be 
bound, either in thought or action, by external 
authority, except in things undoubtedly beyond his 
power and knowledge, and by the authority of a wis¬ 
dom and goodness indisputably higher than his own. 
Such authority, and in such things, is, however, to be 
prized and welcomed in the same way as is that of a 
faithful guide in a perilous journey, or a competent 
teacher by an earnest beginner. Hence it comes to 
pass, that while the intelligent Christian gladly ac¬ 
cepts the authority of Christ and his instructed 
apostles as final, he is nevertheless innocently free 
and pleased to exercise his faculties in gathering con¬ 
firmations from Nature and practical life of the wis¬ 
dom of the divine appointments. 

Thus, at the outset of our inquiry, do we find a 
new and charming application of the cheering assur¬ 
ance that “godliness is profitable unto all things, hav¬ 
ing promise of the life that now is, and of that which 
is to come ” (i Tim. iv : 8); for while the follower of the 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


i-7 


light of reason and Nature, only, can never attain to 
certainty, the lover of the undeceiving Father of 
lights begins with what is most reasonably to him 
the absolute certainty of such a Father’s word, and 
then enjoys the exercise of his faculties in discover¬ 
ing confirmations of that word everywhere. 

Writing primarily for all who are in any degree 
believers in Christianity, the argument from revealed 
religion will here be preferred to that from Nature 
and experience, however fully the latter may be be¬ 
lieved to agree with the former. 

“He. Taketh Away the First that he May Es¬ 
tablish the Second.” Heb . x : 9. 

Having taken the position that it is not necessary 
to go outside of Christianity in search of sufficient 
authority for a permanent keeping of the Lord’s Day, 
we are bound to give here such a preliminary proof 
of this proposition as will sufficiently prepare the 
way for the chapters following, where further proof 
will, as we think, be only more and more evident at 
every step. 

The Decalogue has for ages been most justly re¬ 
garded as an incomparable divine summary of duty 
to God and man. It is worthy of being kept in per¬ 
petual remembrance, if for no other reason than that 
it may be regarded as given to the Jews, not for their 
own benefit only, but in trust for all mankind, until the 
fulness of time should come when its invaluable di¬ 
rections for all right-living should be restated on new 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


18 


and yet stronger grounds in the Gospel, and there 
made a direct gift to the whole world, Jew and Gen¬ 
tile alike. 

Perhaps, therefore, no more satisfying short proof 
could be given of the abundantly adequate replace¬ 
ment of the Law by the Gospel than to show that the 
whole moral substance of the entire Decalogue can be 
constructed several times over out of the command¬ 
ments and precepts of Christ and his apostles. 
Moreover, in doing this, it will become evident that 
the Gospel restatement possesses a searching pene¬ 
tration, a width of reach, an enlargement of ground, 
and a reinforcement of motive and appeal, that never 
would have been ascribed to the original Law. 

The following, which the reader can further am¬ 
plify at pleasure, may sufficiently exhibit our mean¬ 
ing: 

1. Having 710 other Gods but one. 4 ‘Ye can not 

serve God and Mammon” (Luke xvi: 13). “Thee, 
the only true God ” (John xvii: 3). “ But to us there 

is but one God ” (1 Cor. viii : 6). “ One God and 

Father of all” (Eph. iv: 6). 

2. Not worshipping idols. “When ye pray, say, 

Our Father which art in heaven ” (Luke xi: 2). 
“The true worshippers shall worship the Father in 
spirit and in truth” (John iv: 23). “Nor . . . 

idolaters shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 
vi : 9). “ Keep yourselves from idols ” (1 John v: 21). 

3. Not takmg God's name in vain. “ But I say, 

unto you, Swear not at all . . ” (Matt, v : 34-36). 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


19 


“ He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost 
hath never forgiveness ” (Mark iii : 29). “ But above 

all things, my brethren, swear not ” (James v : 12). 

4. Maintaining industry [“ Six days shalt thou 

labor ”] and also devoting a portion of tune to public 
religious duties. “To every man his work” (Mark 
xiii: 34). “Because thou hast been faithful in a very 
little, have thou authority over ten cities ” (Luke xix: 
17). “Be not slothful in business” (Rom. xii:u). 
“ Work with your own hands as we commanded you ” 
(1 Thess. iv : 11, 12). “The Sabbath was made for 
man ” (Mark ii: 27). “ And they continued in the 

apostles’ doctrine and fellowship , and in breaking of 
bread and in prayer ” (Acts ii: 42). “ When ye come 

together in the church . . . When ye come togeth¬ 

er in one place” (1 Cor. xi: 18, 20). “If therefore the 
whole church be come together in one place . . . ” 

(1 Cor. xiv:23). “And when this epistle is read 
among you, cause that it be read also in the church of 
the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle 
from Laodicea” (Col. iv : 16). “In the midst of the 
church will I sing praise unto Thee” (Heb. ii : 12). 

5. Honoring parents and all holding parental rela¬ 

tions. “ For God commanded, saying, Honor thy 
father and mother ” (Matt. xv:4). “And Jesus said 
unto him . . . Thou knowest the command¬ 
ments . . . Honor thy father and thy mother” 

(Luke xviii: 19, 20). “ Render . . . unto Caesar 

the things which be Caesar’s” (Luke xx :25). “For 
I say ... to every man . . . not to think of 



20 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


himself more highly than he ought to think” (Rom. 
xii: 3). “Let every soul be subject unto the higher 
powers,” etc. (Rom. xiii: 1, 7). “ Children, obey your 

parents in the Lord,” etc. (Eph. vi: 1-9). 

6 . Brotherly kindness. Doing no murder nor allow¬ 

ing what may lead to it. “ But I say unto you, that 
whosoever is angry with his brother, without a cause, 
shall be in danger of the judgment” (Matt, v: 22). 
“ . . . Evil thoughts, murders . . . These 

are the things which defile a man ” (Matt, xv : 19, 20). 
“Forbearing one another and forgiving one another” 
(Col. iii: 12-14). “Whosoever hateth his brother is a 
murderer” (1 John iii: 15). 

7. Purity. Not committing adultery or any of the 

sms of which it is chief (Matt, v: 28). “ What ? know 

ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost?” (1 Cor. vi: 19, 20, with iii: 16, 17). 

8. Honesty. Good neighborhood. Not stealing. 
“ Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that 
would borrow of thee turn not thou away” (Matt, v : 
42). “ . . Thefts . . . All these evil things 
. . . defile the man ” (Mark vii : 22, 23). “ Pro¬ 
vide things honest in the sight of all men” (Rom. 
xii: 17). “Let him that stole steal no more; but 
rather let him labor, working with his hands the 
thing which is good, that he may have to give to 
him that needeth” (Eph. iv:28). 

9. Truth. Not false speaking. “. . . False 

witness . . . These are the things which defile a 

man . . .” (Matt, xv: 19, 20). “ Let love be without 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


21 


dissimulation” (Rom. xii:9). “Putting away lying. 
Speak every man truth with his neighbor” (Eph. 
iv • 25). 

10. Contentment. Not being covetous. “Take no 
thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What shall 
we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? ” 
(Matt, vi : 31). “Take heed and beware of covetous¬ 
ness ” (Luke xii: 15). “ Be content with such things 

as ye have ” (Heb. xiii : 5). “. . . Covetousness, 

which is idolatry” (Col. iii: 5). 

Now, as many strong strands are bound into one, 
and reinforced by enveloping bands, so is this 
reconstruction of the Decalogue from the words of 
Jesus and his apostles gathered up and strength¬ 
ened by such additional words of original authority 
and power as these following : “Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and 
great commandment. And the second is like unto it: 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these 
two commandments hang all the law and the pro¬ 
phets ” (Matt, xxii: 37-40). “A new commandment I 
give unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have 
loved you, that ye also love one another ” (John xiii : 
34). “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore, 
love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. xiii : 10). 

Keeping these comprehensive and explicit words 
in mind, and adding, yet again, that Jesus, when he 
left the world, did not leave his disciples comfort¬ 
less, but provided, first, as shown in the Book of 



22 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


Acts, for the founding of a permanent, divine institu¬ 
tion, with which he promised to be to the end of the 
world (Matt, xxviii : 20); and, second , the gift of the 
Holy Ghost (John xiv : 20, and xvi: 13, 14); we may 
enter upon our study of the Lord’s Day with a rea¬ 
sonable and comfortable assurance that all necessary 
proof of its authority, value, and permanence can be 
found within the bounds of Christianity as a whole ; 
that is, in the Christian Scriptures, and in Christian 
history from the time of the Book of Acts—which is 
its first volume—to the present day. Then, having 
finished this study, we can gratify ourselves by a 
pleasing search for confirmations elsewhere of the 
conclusions to which the Christian argument alone 
will always and certainly lead. 

We have finally to notice, briefly, certain facts of 
human nature which have a bearing on our subject. 
First among them we mention 

Action and Reaction. 

These are equal and opposite, in morals as well as 
in the material world. The wall pushes me as hard 
as I push it. The rope pulls me as hard as I pull it. 
Likewise, the further custom degenerates from 
.righteous use into wicked abuse, the further will 
reform, when its time comes, as it always will, swing 
in the opposite direction towards rigorous strictness. 
Then, when the uninformed multitude have, through 
the lapse of time, forgotten the abuses which called 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


23 


for the reform, and impelled it to excessive rigor, a 
reaction, in favor of a greater semblance of freedom 
in the form of looseness, again sets in. 

“As a man thinketh so is he,” and so this prin¬ 
ciple of action and reaction applies to the opinions, 
out of which both use and abuse grow. Thus, if a 
misplaced reverence for merely human authority, 
disguised as ecclesiastical authority, leads to the per¬ 
version of a divine institution, the reaction from it 
may lead to a strained effort after divine authority by 
seeking in Judaism for the grounds of what belongs 
to Christianity. It is equally true that the subse¬ 
quent discovery, by experience, reflection, and com¬ 
parison of views, that Judaism has been dispropor¬ 
tionately drawn upon for authority for any Christian 
institution, may lead, by another excessive reaction, 
to abandoning all Scripture authority for the institu¬ 
tion, and to treating it as having no divine authority. 

The same principle applies yet again to the feelings 
as causes of action. Thus, if what is doctrinally 
right, relative to some institution of religion, is made 
hateful by the evil conduct of its advocates, those 
who may suffer from such conduct will be quite apt 
to make both the form and the grounds of the insti¬ 
tution as different as possible from those which are 
advocated by the offending party. Both parties will 
be likely to make themselves disagreeable to each 
other, and to intensify each other, until active mu¬ 
tual opposition and offense die out under the divert¬ 
ing influence of new circumstances. 



24 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


But when persecution, whether bodily, moral, or 
social, has mostly ceased; when controversy has 
become more fair and amiable, seeking truth more 
than victory ; when modesty and charity have largely 
replaced bigotry and hatred; and when action, reac¬ 
tion, and counter-reaction have all taken their turn ; 
one may hope that a calm re-examination of a sub¬ 
ject like the one before us may lead to a position 
where all can find rest from extremes. 

Facts and Theories. 

Again: A fact, or any item of practice, in any de¬ 
partment of life, in art, commerce, science, morals, 
or religion, is one thing. The theory of that fact, or 
practice,— that is, how and why it came to be,— is an¬ 
other. Moreover, the certainty of the fact, or the 
stability and the correctness of the practice, while they 
do really have a theory, or reason for being, do not 
depend on our knowing what that theory is, nor upon 
such theories as we are able to form. 

Thus, the sun rose and set, long before men knew 
how the phenomenon was caused. Again, in the 
moral sphere, three men may be equally scrupulous in 
paying their just debts, and whether legally obliged 
to do so or not. One of these men, animated by a 
lofty abstraction, says he does it “because it is right.” 
The second, ever loving the thought of beneficence, 
says : “If a thing is right, there is a reason why it is 
right,” and that reason is his ground for acting, and 
he declares that the promotion of the good of all con- 



SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


25 


cerned, is the reason why an act is right, and there¬ 
fore why he wishes to do it. The third, reverently 
contemplating the thought of a holy, living, and 
supreme authority, says that he pays his debts be¬ 
cause it is agreeable to the expressed will of such 
authority that he should do so. 

Yet, however different their three ultimate reasons 
for acting, these three men are equally to be de¬ 
pended upon to do their duty, so that no one need be 
at all solicitous lest either fail to do it, on account of 
the speculative theory by which he accounts to him¬ 
self for the fact that he does it. The good will to do 
it lies deeper than the scientific ground for doing it. 

Likewise, on the great subject before us, any, 
even a moderate, breadth of reading shows that 
while the serious, earnest, devoted Christian world 
is everywhere fully prepared to keep the Lord’s Day 
holy, there is some difference in the particular ground 
for doing so in different cases. Yet, so long as prac¬ 
tice is thus alike settled, and substantially correct, 
we need not be anxiously solicitous as to the theoreti¬ 
cal ground on which it is supposed to rest ; espe¬ 
cially as, if theory be essentially wrong, it will correct 
itself through experience of its corrupting effect on 
the practice. 

Yet, while all this may, in general terms, be true, 
we would not be understood to be indifferent to the 
importance of the most perfect attainable grounds 
for our practice. For any material error in theory 
will be represented in practice, and excess in any 



26 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


direction in practice will, by the principle of moral 
reaction, generate excess in an opposite direction 
somewhere, as we have already endeavored to show. 

We have therefore, indeed, taken great pains to 
establish the keeping of the Lord’s Day, on “the 
best and surest foundations,” as a means of securing 
the most correctly grounded, and hence, hopefully, 
the most general and permanent observance of it. 



IN THE GOSPELS. 


2 / 


CHAPTER II. 

THE LORD’S DAY IN THE GOSPELS. 

T HIS chapter is devoted to the demonstration of 
the following fundamental proposition : 

The Lord’s Day is a permanent Christian festival 
in memory of Christ’s Resurrection. It is divinely 
indicated as such : — 

First , By being provided, like its divine Founder, 
with an awakening forerunner, in the triumphal entry 
into Jerusalem. 

Second, By the strikingly marked recorded appear¬ 
ances of our Lord to his disciples, at and after his 
Resurrection. 

Third, By his highly significant intervening ab¬ 
sences. 

Fourth, By the crowning importance of the event 
commemorated, both to ourselves individually, and to 
Christianity. 

I. The Forerunner of the Lord’s Day. 

Certain ideas seem to be a part of the original en¬ 
dowment, or stock in life, of human nature. Among 
such is the idea of giving a name to every object of 
sight or thought, by which it may be generally recog¬ 
nized. Then, again, whether by imitation of spiders 



2 8 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


and cocoon-making insects, or by an original instinct, 
man seems to be everywhere a spinner. Spinning 
stones, rudely shaped like plummets, are found from 
New England to Afghanistan, and indicate rude arts 
of spinning, even in the remote “ stone age ” of man’s 
development. Likewise, the coming of a great per¬ 
son or event has long been customarily proclaimed 
by heralds, these, in a broad sense, including the fig¬ 
urative, may be events as well as persons. The sing¬ 
ing morning stars, and the joyfully shouting sons of 
God, heralded the new creation. Moses heralded 
the deliverance from Egypt. Horsemen, in advance, 
indicate a royal approach, or the on-coming of a pro¬ 
cession ; and every time that any one, from Darius 
on his throne to the humblest person about to make 
a visit, sends prince or child to say, “Tell them that 
we are coming,” this familiar idea of a herald or fore¬ 
runner finds an application. 

The mind is prepared by considqrations like these 
to expect that, if so great a change were to occur as 
that of the day of weekly rest for body, soul, and 
spirit, and of the ground for its observance, the 
change would be significantly heralded. The first 
Lord’s Day, the day of Resurrection, was thus heralded 
by Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was 
then heralded in two ways : first, by the manner of 
his entry, and, second, by the time of it. In the 
manner of his entry, and of his reception by the peo¬ 
ple, he appeared in one of his permanent charac¬ 
ters, that of King of his people , having , therefore , an- 



IN THE GOSPELS. 


2 9 


thority to appoint or change times and seasons for them. 
Indeed, by the people he was hailed as king.* His 
appearance then as king is further evident from his 
manifestation of himself in that character, as seen in 
his cleansing of the temple on the following day (Matt, 
xxi: 12, 13); also, from the manifestation, during the 
same week, of his two other characters : of prophet 
in his teaching in the temple on the Tuesday; and 
of priest in his sacrificial death on the Friday. 

In the time of his triumphal entry, the first day of 
the week,f he, the Lord of the Sabbath, drew at¬ 
tention beforehand to that day, as one on which fur¬ 
ther significant manifestations might be expected. 
Expectations thus excited, he who was the Truth, 
would not, and, as the next week’s first day shows, 
did not deceive. 

Thus, we say, Christ, the prophet of his own reli¬ 
gion, did, as it were, foretell and appropriately herald 
the day which, in fact, has ever since been the Sab¬ 
bath of the Gospel and of Christianity, and, by so 
doing, he marked it as intended to be what, in fact, 
it has actually been. 

II. Our Lord’s Appearances on his Resur¬ 
rection-day. 

The Initial Lord’s Day. The first appearance of 
our Lord, after his Resurrection, was to Mary Magda- 

* Luke xix : 37 ; John xii: 15. 

f“ Harmony of the Gospels in English.” Gardiner. 1871. 
Pp. 180-183. 



30 


THE SUNDAY QUEST/OH. 


lene, at the sepulchre (Mark xvi : 9 ; John xx : 1-11), 
and wgs marked by a vision of angels (John xx : 12), 
and/by the words of Jesus to her (vs. 15-17). 

It is foreign to our present purpose to harmonize 
the accounts of the different evangelists ; yet we may 
remark, in passing, that each of them doubtless re¬ 
corded what was most striking or best known to him- 
seff, according to his own share in the events of that 
wondrous day; but without that precision in state¬ 
ments of time, to which we are accustomed, and 
which would make the order of the events unmistak¬ 
able. With this explanation, we may proceed as fol¬ 
lows : 

The second appearance was to the company of wo¬ 
men, as they were returning to Jerusalem to tell the 
apostles of the Resurrection (Matt, xxviii 17-10). 

Mary of Magdala, that is, Mary Magdalene, and 
Mary, the wife of Clopas,* mother of James the 
Less, and of Joses, watched at the sepulchre till late 
on the Friday of our Lord’s burial (Matt, xxvii: 56, 
61; Mark xv:47). Others appear to have been 
with them (Matt, xxvii : 55, 56 ; Luke xxiii: 55). On 
Sunday morning, very early (Matt, xxviii : 1 ; Mark 
xvi: 1 ; Luke xxiv : 1 ; John xx: 1), Mary Magdalene, 
and Mary, wife of Clopas (Matt, xxviii: 1), and Sa¬ 
lome (Mark xvi: 1), and numerous others (comp. 
Matt, xxvii 155, 56; Luke xxiii: 55 and xxiv : 1, 10), 
visited the sepulchre. Mary Magdalene alone (John 


*“ Smith’s Diet, of the Bible,” Art. Cleopas. 



IN THE GOSPELS. 


31 


xx : 2) hastens to tell Peter and John, who immedi¬ 
ately ran to the spot, evidently followed by Mary, 
since, after they had left it (John xx: 10), she re¬ 
mained there weeping (John xx : 11). Then, as Mary 
Magdalene, with the other women (Matt, xxviii: 8; 
Luke xxiv:9, 10), returned to tell, not the apostles 
only, but “all the rest” of the disciples (v. 9), Jesus 
met them (Matt, xxviii: 9). 

The third appearance seems to have been one to 
Peter only, indicated in 1 Cor. xv: 5. He may have 
been within sight of either or both of the previous 
appearances (Luke xxiv : 12). 

The fourth appearance was to Cleopas and an un¬ 
known other disciple, on the road to Emmaus (Mark 
xvi : 12 ; Luke xxiv : 13-33). 

The fifth appearance was to those ten of the eleven, 
who were present in a closed room, with others, on 
the evening of the Resurrection-day (Mark xvi: 14- 
18; Luke xxiv : 36-49; John xix : 19-23). 

Both of the last two appearances were strongly 
marked by most striking and impressive words and 
manner on the part of Jesus. All of the five occurred 
on the day of the Resurrection , and under circumstances 
adapted to make it an ever-memorable day ; sufficient, 
without positive words of institution (though, as in¬ 
dicated by subsequent practice, such words may have 
been pronounced, if not recorded, — see John xxi 125; 
Acts i: 3), to inaugurate the day as one never more 
to be disregarded, but ever more to be observed and 
cherished by citizens of the kingdom of Christ; and 



32 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


that, too, spontaneously, as, in earthly relations, wo 
observe the twenty-second of February, or the fourth 
of July, without need of a law commanding us to do 
so. 

The bearing upon our subject of the number and 
manner of these numerous appearances of the risen 
Lord, on the initial Lord’s Day, is important, and may 
be further emphasized. For not only did it more 
fully make known the fact of the Resurrection as a 
thing thenceforth impossible to doubt, but it lent an 
impressiveness to the day , which would make it well- 
nigh impossible to fail to commemorate it on each 
weekly return. This point is important, for much 
has been made of the singularly impressive manner 
in which the Decalogue was delivered, to show not 
only its authority for those to whom it was delivered, 
but for all others. But, while, under Moses, there 
were both the objective law and the impressive cir¬ 
cumstances of its promulgation, there were, under 
Christ, the equally impressive circumstances, but of 
an unterrifying kind, better suited, therefore, to the 
unwritten law of liberty and love ; the law twice an ! 
emphatically declared to be written on the hearty and 
put into the mind y and not upon stone, or upon any 
other material (Heb. viii: 8, x : 16). 

III. The Second Lord’s Day, with the Pre¬ 
ceding Absence ; and Other Lord’s Days. 

The disciples had long been accustomed to the 
daily presence of their Lord. What, then, must have 



IN THE GOSPELS. 


33 


been the workings of their minds, when, for six 
successive days, they neither saw, nor heard, him 
whom they had seen so often and impressively on the 
first day? Were ever the seven days of any week so 
diligently counted, or so filled with rehearsal of the 
wondrous past, or wondering as to what would next be 
revealed to them, and when ? To minds thus excited to 
the highest pitch of impressibility, the week was again 
marked by the Lord’s second appearance to his dis¬ 
ciples on the first day of the week. This meeting 
occurred, partly, no doubt, because “Thomas, one of 
the twelve, . . . was not with them ” on the 

evening of the day of the Resurrection, when the 
others received the blessing of peace, a divine com¬ 
mission, and were endowed with the gift of the Holy 
Ghost (John xx:2i-24). But the choice of the 
first day of the week, again, on which to reassure the 
disciples by the memorable demonstration granted to 
the doubting Thomas, and by many other signs done 
in the presence of the disciples, indelibly marked that 
day upon their minds as thenceforth the boundary 
day of the week. 

At this point, we may pause to consider a great 
fact, and its natural and divine explanation. 

The unalterable fact is, that the Lord’s Day has, 
for now nearly 1900 years, shown an inextinguishable 
vitality; which, moreover, promises to continue in¬ 
definitely, since the day seems never to have had a 
stronger hold on Christendom than it has now, when 
so many are coming to perceive and claim their rights 



34 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


in it, and when so many influences are actively at 
work to guard and preserve it. 

God and man are co-workers (2 Cor. vi: 1). There 
are therefore reasons, in the constitution of human 
nature, as well as in the divine mind, for such a 
phenomenon as the Christian Lord’s Day. On the 
human, or natural, side of the case, it may be said, 
that things of time and space are defined and marked 
by their boundaries ; as the ends of a line, or of a day, 
week, or year. The week is marked by either of its 
terminal days, and habitually by no others. Also, 
there is a tendency in human nature to observe me¬ 
morial days, and to mark the initial days of regular 
periods. The commercial world has its quarter days, 
semi-annual days, and annual days, and numberless 
societies have their fixed monthly and greater annual 
meetings. 

Turning from these natural facts to God’s recogni- 
. tion of them, we see in the burial of the seventh day 
in the tomb where our Lord rested, and in his non- 
appearance on the first seventh day after his Resur¬ 
rection, the obliteration of that day as the boundary, 
to the mind, of the week. Still more plainly we see, 
in the wholly unparalleled fact of the Resurrection, a 
fit foundation for an abiding memorial day. Also, in 
the re-appearance, again with conclusive signs (John 
xx : 27-30) on the second first-day, after an unprece¬ 
dented absence on the intervening six days, we see 
the actual transfer, by divine action, of the recog¬ 
nized bounding and memorial day of the week from the 



/H THE GOSPELS. 


35 


seventh to the first. Moreover, we may fitly say of 
the fact which forms the foundation of the Lord’s Day, 
“ other foundation can no man lay than that is laid ” 
(i Cor. iii : 11). This view of the divine authority for 
the unbroken continuance of the first day, as the 
Christian sacred memorial boundary day of the week, 
is strengthened by the gift on that day of the Holy 
Ghost (John xx : 22), coupled with the promise that 
“ he should be the guide into all truth” (John xvi: 13). 
What, then, has actually been' universally and unin¬ 
terruptedly done and accepted by Christendom, from 
the day of the Resurrection till now (with exceptions 
too small to note), relative to the foundation and time 
of the bounding memorial day of the week, may be 
certainly accepted as the work of him who shows the 
will of Christ (John xvi: 13), “who is head over all 
things to the church ” (Eph. i: 22). 

Other Lord’s Days Before the Ascension. 

So much being so well established by the study of 
the first two Lord’s Days, we can see that the men¬ 
tion of other recurrences of the day, previous to the 
Ascension, would be comparatively unimportant; 
would be more gratifying to Christian curiosity than 
essential to the knowledge of Christian duty. Ac¬ 
cordingly, we feel less surprise at finding no certain 
mention of other Lord’s Days, during the forty days 
before the Ascension. 

Yet certain points, carefully studied, make it reason¬ 
ably probable that the first day of the week did con- 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


36 


tinue, until the Ascension, to be marked by manifes¬ 
tations of our Lord to his disciples.* 

1. There were four more Sundays before the As¬ 

cension ; and there were four more recorded appear¬ 
ances of the Lord during the weeks which contained 
them. These were : (1) To seven, five apostles, and 
two “ other disciples ” at the Sea of Tiberias (John 
xxi : 1, 2). (2) To “above five hundred brethren at 
once” (1 Cor. xv : 6). (3) “After that, he was seen 

of James” (1 Cor. xv : 7). (4) To all the apostles, on a 

mountain in Galilee, where Jesus had appointed them 
(Matt, xxviii: 16). 

On these appearances, and on 1 Cor. xv : 7, last 
clause (“then of all the apostles”), with Acts i: 3, 
it must be remarked, that, if (2) and (4), just 
named, were at the same time, the meeting with “all 
the apostles ” (1 Cor. xv: 7) might not have been the 
same as the one mentioned in Matt, xxviii: 16. 
Also, that, while Acts i: 3 need not mean that 
Christ was seen on every one of the forty days, yet 
it may be relied on with the preceding to show that 
at least four, and not unlikely more, interviews were 
held with his disciples between the second Lord’s 
Day and the Ascension. 

2. St. John (xxi : 14) expressly declares that (1) 
was “the third time that Jesus showed himself to his 
disciples, after that he was risen from the dead.” 

* See “Eight Studies of the Lord’s Day,” pp. 56-58; also 
“ Harmony of the Gospels in English,” by Professor Gardiner, 
pp. 282-4. 




IN THE GOSPELS. 


37 


Now, as this was not the third single appearance, 
there having been five on the day of the Resurrec¬ 
tion, it is natural to suppose that it was the third day 
on which Jesus had shown himself, whatever the 
number of times on each day; and, as the previous 
appearances had been only on Sundays, it would 
seem that this third appearance most probably 
occurred when the previous experience of the disciples 
would have led them to expect it, that is, on the third 
Lord’s Day. 

3. The special probability thus established, that the 
meeting of the five apostles and two disciples by the 
Sea of Tiberias was on the third Lord’s Day, in¬ 
creases the probability that all the three other in¬ 
definitely dated appearances were on the three 
remaining Lord’s Days. 

4. Moreover, there is not the slightest recorded 
indication of any thing tending to divert the disciples’ 
minds from the weekly returning Lord’s Days to the 
other naturally bounding day of the week, the 
seventh; and so the succession, then begun, has 
proved the force of its originating impulse, by com¬ 
ing without interruption down to us. 

If it be objected that the day, inaugurated as 
we have described, seems, after all, very inconspic¬ 
uous, according to man’s way of looking at such 
things, that is, as respects the degree of public atten¬ 
tion paid to it at the time, we must remember several 
things as matter for a reply. First, the Christian 
Church, whose it was to keep, was itself as yet un- 



38 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


organized, and existed only potentially in Jesus and 
the disciples, as the plant does in the germ. But as 
the Church has, from its small beginning, become 
deeply rooted, and wide-spreading, and is still vigor¬ 
ously growing, so the Lord’s Day needed no more 
startling and generally noted promulgation than it 
received. Its enduring principle of life was in the 
nature of the event which it 'was to commemorate, 
as seen in the fact that it thus far ever has commem¬ 
orated it. Second, in general, the development of 
Christianity, and of Lord’s Day observance as an 
element of it, has simply corresponded in the king¬ 
dom of grace with the great growth from small be¬ 
ginnings which we so often see in Nature — oaks from 
acorns, rivers from springs among the hills, and 
mighty nations from a handful of men actuated by 
great principles. In a word, the origin of the day, 
seen in the light of its history, is only another 
example bidding us not to despise the day of small 
things. 

It is the power , and not the conspicuousness in the 
eyes of a multitude, of the germ out of which the 
Lord’s Day has grown, which has given it so immov¬ 
able a lodgment in the hearts of Christ’s disciples, 
so that we may well say that to him whose heart is 
filled with the spirit of his Lord’s holy beatitudes, a 
command to keep his Lord’s Day would be super¬ 
fluous ; while to him whose heart can turn away from 
them, it would be useless. 



IN THE GOSPELS . 


39 


IV. The Importance of the Resurrection, to 
Ourselves, and to Christianity. 

That we have not overstated the importance of the 
Resurrection, as compared with other facts of the 
Christian system, and its consequent fitness to be 
the foundation of a perpetual memorial day, we think 
is clear from Holy Scripture. 

An important function of the apostles was to be 
witnesses to the world of the Resurrection, as the fact 
on which Christianity rested (Acts i : 22, iv : 33). 
They preached through Jesus the Resurrection from 
the dead (Acts iv:2); “through Jesus,” agreeing 
with 1 Cor. xv: 14, that if Christ be not risen, then is 
their preaching vain. It was by the Resurrection that 
Christ was declared to be, or accredited as, the Son 
of God, with power (Rom. i 14); that is, as really be¬ 
ing what he claimed to be, and “with power” to ac¬ 
complish what he professes to have come into the 
world to do. 

In that wonderful passage (Heb. vi:i, 2), a mar¬ 
velously compact, symmetrical, and comprehensive 
creed, in Scripture itself, the Resurrection is one of 
the two controlling future realities in the six first 
principles (v:i2)of the Christian religion. These 
principles are grouped in three pairs : two inward 
states; two outward signs; two future realities; and 
Christ’s Resurrection gives meaning and importance 
to them all. 

St. Peter writes that it is by the Resurrection of 



40 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


Jesus that we have a lively hope of blessed things to 
come (i Pet. i: 3, 4); and that it is the same event 
which gives assurance of the salvation promised to 
us in baptism (1 Pet. iii: 21). 

To utterances so clear and forcible, other quota¬ 
tions could only add confirmation; they could add 
nothing essential. 

When, furthermore, we read in Rom. viii :28, of the 
working together for good, of all things, to them that 
love God; and of the glorious vision of the future by 
the faithful, in 1 Cor. ii: 9 and Jude 24, as respects 
blessedness, both of character and condition, and that 
these are the things of which, by the truth of the 
Resurrection, we have a “lively hope,” we may well 
enough say that one day in every week, as the repre¬ 
sentative of all its days, may well be set apart for the 
commemoration of that most mighty event, as a 
means of keeping alive, amid the cares and toils of 
earth, and equally amid all its lawful joys and pleas¬ 
ures too, the thought of those better things, of which 
the Resurrection is the highest pledge. 

This supreme importance of the Resurrection, as 
the outward and visible guaranty of the truth and 
importance of the entire Christian system, affords the 
appropriate answer to the objection that an annual 
celebration of the Resurrection, as at Easter, is suffi¬ 
cient for it, as well as for the Nativity at Christmas; 
or for other more or less widely celebrated outward 
events of Christ’s life. All these other events would, 
like the Ascension, never have been ; or, like the Na- 




IN THE GOSPELS. 


41 


tivitv, or the Crucifixion, would have been of no avail 
but for the Resurrection. That supreme event may,' 
therefore, most appropriately have a perpetual me¬ 
morial, while the others do not. 

Finally, there is a close and striking analogy be¬ 
tween God’s rest at creation, as the ground, by way 
of divine example, for human rest; and the Resur¬ 
rection, as the ground of the Christian day of rest. 
For, in both cases alike, it was a divine resting from 
divine labor. “Thus the heavens and the earth 
were finished and God, having seen that every thing 
which he had made was “very good,” “ rested from all 
his work (Gen. ii: 1, 2). 

Likewise, Christ declared the completion of the 
work of man’s Redemption in the words, “It is fin¬ 
ished”; while it is also recorded that “he shall see 
of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied” (Isa. 
liii: 11), and further, in Heb. iv: 10,— which v. 8, and 
especially iii : 11, allows us to apply to Christ as well 
as to his brethren, — that “he that is entered into his 
rest , he also hath ceased from his own works , as God 
did front his” 

We think we have here, in the fact, character, and 
meaning of the Resurrection, as now set forth, a deep 
and strong foundation on which to build. What has 
been built upon it, and when, and how, and with 
what stability, we shall see more fully as we proceed, 



42 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


CHAPTER III. 

THE LORD’S DAY AND THE APOSTLES. 

T HE subject of this chapter is the following prop¬ 
osition : 

The Lord’s Day has a divine foundation and 
sanction; not only as indicated by so memorable a 
manifestation of the divine power and purpose as the 
Resurrection, but as is further evident from the 
honor shown to it by the inspired apostles and their 
converts, and by the apostolic precepts relating to it. 

Having shown, as we think, in the preceding chap¬ 
ter, that the Lord’s Day has a practical foundation 
of such grand significance as entitles it to the per¬ 
petual observance, which, in fact, it has had, we shall 
now proceed to show the further authoritative indica¬ 
tions of its intended observance, afforded by apostolic 
precept and example. 

The Seventh Lord’s Day. It was not more than 
ten days from the Ascension (Acts i : 2, 3) to Pente¬ 
cost (Acts ii: 1). And it was “ in those days ” that 
“ Peter stood up” (Acts i: 15) and gave counsel 
leading to the choice of Matthias to fill the place of 
Judas Iscariot. These ten days included a Sunday, 
as mentioned in Chapter II, and if that first apostolic 




THE APOSTLES. 


43 


Sunday were not especially marked by this choice of 
Matthias, we may be sure, from Acts i: 4, 14, 15, and 
ii: 46, that the apostles and brethren were assembled 
together for religious purposes on that day. And it 
is altogether probable that its origin and meaning 
were then especially remembered. 

The Eighth Lord’s Day. There are difficulties in 
the way of a perfect understanding of the few notes 
of time given by the different evangelists in their ac¬ 
counts of the closing days of our Lord’s earthly minis¬ 
try. These difficulties have occasioned a bewildering 
amount of learned discussion of the question wheth¬ 
er the Pentecost of Acts ii: 1 fell on the seventh or 
the first day of the week, that is, on the Jewish Sab¬ 
bath or the Christian Lord’s Day.* There are high 
authorities for both opinions. “ The morrow after 
the seventh sabbath ” mentioned in Lev. xxiii: 15, 16, 
has been understood by some to mean that Pentecost 
must always fall on a first day of the week. Jesus 
rose from the dead on the first day of the week. 
The day preceding was the Jewish Sabbath, and “ the 
morrow after the seventh sabbath ’’.from it would be 
a first day again. But the real difficulty is in fixing 
the precise date of the Passover feast for that year. 

This difficulty, however, is not especially important 
in relation to our subject. For, as we learn from 
Acts xvii: 1, 2, the Jewish Sabbath continued, for rea¬ 
sons of convenience and Christian expediency, to be 


* See Smith’s Bible Die., Arts. “ Passover” and “Pentecost.’ 



44 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


observed alongside of the Lord’s Day, which gradu¬ 
ally supplanted it. If, then, the descent of the Holy 
Ghost (Acts ii) took place on the seventh day, the 
apostles were thereby equipped on that day for all 
the more effective work on the next, or Lord’s Day, 
and thus that latter day was divinely marked with 
honor. But if, as many believe, that Pentecost fell 
on the Sunday, the descent on that day did indeed 
most emphatically mark the day for lasting remem¬ 
brance. 

In either case, then, the eighth Lord’s Day was so 
closely associated with the special gift of the Holy 
Ghost, that it must have greatly strengthened the 
current of thought and feeling in favor of the perma¬ 
nent religious observance of the first day of the week. 

Other certain or probable notices of the Lord's Day. 
The day of Pentecost (Acts ii: i) having been in 
the year 33, it was about the year 59, according to a 
carefully studied chronology of the Book of Acts, 
that St. Paul was at Troas (Acts xx:6, 7), with his 
companions, for seven days. “And upon the first day 
of the week , when the disciples came together to 
break bread , Paul preached unto them,” etc. 

This account has been looked upon by most bibli¬ 
cal scholars as a distinct indication in Scripture of 
that cilstomary religions observance then of the 
Lord’s Day, which we certainly know to have after¬ 
wards universally prevailed among Christians. 

It has been stated that seven passages, in all, in 
the New Testament, have generally been quoted in 



THE APOSTLES. 


45 


support of some kind of Lord’s Day observance. 
Grounding the true Christian Lord’s Day, as we do, 
upon the Resurrection, and making it the Christian 
substitute for the Jewish Sabbath, there would seem 
to be great force in its favor in another passage (i 
Cor. v : 7, 8). For although the actual sacrifice of 
“ Christ our passover” took place on Friday, yet, as 
that sacrifice would have been fruitless and forgotten, 
but for the Resurrection, as is indicated by St. Paul 
(i Cor. xv: 14, 17), the Christian keeping of the feast 
of Passover (1 Cor. v:8) is the keeping of the fes¬ 
tival of the Resurrection, which, as the same passage 
shows, moreover, is to be kept not carnally and sensual¬ 
ly, but with all of spirituality, all of striving after a 
guileless holiness of soul, which the inspiration of so 
divinely glorious an event can produce in a human 
being. And, further, as a weekly memorial of the 
Resurrection is elsewhere referred to as customary, 
we may fairly claim this passage in favor of a holy and 
spiritually joyful keeping of the Lord’s Day. 

Again : In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, be¬ 
lieved to have been written from Ephesus during St. 
Paul’s third missionary tour in the three years, A. D. 
54-57, he gives the following direction (1 Cor. xvi 12), 
in speaking of collections to be made for the poor 
Christians of Judea : “ Upon the first day of the week , " 
let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath 
prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I 
come.” 

This plainly implies, first, an habitual religious 




46 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


assembling on the first day of every week, and 
second, that alms-giving was an element of Christian 
worship. 

But, further, and speaking of the same thing, we 
are told, in the preceding verse, that “as I have 
given, order to the churches of Galatia, even so do 
ye.” So then, both in Galatia in Asia, and in Cor¬ 
inth in Europe, the religious observance of the Lord’s 
Day was habitual. It would be disingenuous, how¬ 
ever, here to conceal the fact, that great names in 
successive ages may be quoted against a reliance on 
this passage as proving an habitual religious keeping 
of the first day of the week. Chrysostom, in the 
fourth century, understands the “laying by” to be 
at home, rather than putting into a public collection; 
and Milton, Neander, Olshausen, and others agree 
with him.* Still, the fact that the act was com¬ 
manded to be habitual in the churches of widely 
separated regions, on the first day of the week, is not 
without significance, as certainly showing that the 
day was to be religiously marked by apostolic 
authority. But when Domville f goes so far as to 
say, as the conclusion of a “ most able, elaborate, and 
scholarlike treatise,” that “there is not a single instance 
recorded in Scripture of the observance of the Sun¬ 
day by the Christian Church, or by any one of them 
[the apostles], and that such observance is not an in¬ 
stitution of divine appointment,” we think too little 

* Cox, Lit. Sab. Question, vol. i, p. 177. 

f Often referred to by Cox. 



THE APOSTLES. 


47 


account is made, first, of the fact that the Church 
was organized before the New Testament was written, 
thus making some practices too familiar to need 
directions for them ; second, of the exposure to perse¬ 
cution, which might make general and habitual pub¬ 
lic social assembling for Christian worship impossi¬ 
ble; third, of the indwelling of the Divine Spirit, 
guiding the Christian consciousness of the Church at 
large, in due time, without the need of written direc¬ 
tions; and, fourth, of such expressions as “and the 
rest will I set in order when I come ” (i Cor. xi: 
34), intimating how much more the apostles may 
have said than they have written , as indicated by 
the practice of the Church from shortly after their 
day until now. 

Further, we may reasonably infer, from such ex¬ 
hortations as that of Phil, iii: 16, that the “rule” 
concerning habitual collections on the Lord’s Day, in 
Galatia and in Corinth, was “the same ” with respect 
to that, as well as to other things, in all the places 
which St. Paul visited ; some of which are mentioned 
in Acts xvi 14-12. Finally, the marked similarity of 
the expressions, “ that there be no gatherings when I 
come ” (1 Cor. xvi: 2), and “ make up beforehand 
your bounty, whereof ye had notice before, that the 
same might be ready ” (2 Cor. ix : 5) — written a year 
or two later — indicates the permanence of the usage 
thus apostolically or darned for the first day of the 
week. 

Next, we note the words of St. Paul in his Epistle 



43 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


to the Hebrews, written, as diligent examination 
makes sufficiently certain, to the Jewish converts in 
Palestine before, yet not very long before, the de¬ 
struction of Jerusalem in the year 70, perhaps about 
the year 65. In Heb. x: 24, 25, written, therefore, 
some time after the passages already quoted, he says : 
“And let us consider one another to provoke unto 
love and good works; not forsaking the assembling 
of ourselves together , as the manner of some is; but 
exhorting one another.” Now, when a custom has be¬ 
come long and widely established, as we have now 
seen good reason to believe that Christian religious 
assemblies already had been for about thirty years, a 
slight allusion to it would be sufficiently intelligible. 
Hence, although the first day of the week is not here 
mentioned, yet as religious assemblies on that day 
seem to have long been general, hardly anything else 
could have been understood by those addressed than 
that they were not, for fear of persecution, to shrink 
from confessing themselves to be Christ’s disciples 
by forsaking their customary religious assemblies. 

Moreover, that these assemblies were distinctively 
religious , is indicated, not only negatively, in that they 
could hardly be any thing else in those troubled times, 
but, positively, by the exhortation to love , of which 
the customary Lord’s Day “breaking of bread” was 
the pledge ; and to good works , like the alms-givings 
elsewhere ordered as a part of worship; and the ex¬ 
horting , or preaching, which was also, from the first, 
a part of the Lord’s Day service (Acts xx : 7). 



THE APOSTLES. 


49 


Once more : Having regard, first, to the principle 
already mentioned, that customs, well established 
and generally known, are sufficiently understood by 
slight allusion ; and, second, to the fact , that it is 
reasonably believed that St. James, who dwelt at 
Jerusalem, the fountain-head and home-city of Chris¬ 
tianity, wrote his epistle to all his Christian fellow- 
countrymen (James i: i, ii: i, 7), as late as A. D. 62, 
we shall venture to add James ii: 2, compared with 
i: 22, 23, as a passing allusion to habitual Christian 
assemblies, too well known to be held on the first 
day of the week, to make the mention of the day 
necessary. Judging by our own Christian usages, 
chap, i: 22, 23, would readily be taken as referring 
to the hearing of religious instruction on the Lord’s 
Day, without putting it into practice during the week. 
Likewise, the slighting treatment of the poor in pub¬ 
lic religious assemblies is one of the very things that 
is equally complained of now in what are condemned 
by their very name of “fashionable congregations.” 
Unconverted Jews, of course, did not have the faith 
of Christ (chap, ii: 1) at all; nor could they be 
called by “that worthy name” (ii: 7). Hence only 
Jewish converts to Christ are meant; and their as¬ 
semblies, here alluded to as held, and impliedly for 
hearing the Gospel (chap, i: 22, 23), would naturally, 
judging by the light of very early history, be on the 
first day of the week, at least as soon as circum¬ 
stances permitted doing “all things decently and in 
order” (1 Cor. xiv :4o). 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


$0 


Finally: There is the remarkable utterance of the 
Apostle John (Rev. i: io), “I was in the Spirit on the 
Lord’s Day.” 

The late date at which various circumstances lead 
us to believe that the Apocalypse was written, and 
the fact that it was a vision of Christ which John 
saw (i: 12, 13), forbid us to suppose that he meant a 
Jewish Sabbath. The aged, apostle, last survivor of 
the twelve, died at an unknown date, which has been 
fixed at various times between the years A. D. 89 
and A. D. 120, so that before his death, probably, 
the term Lord’s Day — as it is historically certain 
that it eventually did become — was becoming the 
received name for the first day of the week. Hence 
we are at least free, if not bound, to believe, that he 
meant the same day by that name, and that he 
whom Jesus loved, and who fervently returned that 
love, first gave that most appropriate of names to 
the day which was uniformly celebrated by the fol¬ 
lowers of the ascended Lord. 

It is true that some have thought the Lord’s Day 
here meant the Jewish Sabbath. But the few sup¬ 
porting references for this view are mostly in the Old 
Testament; the first day of the week was well estab¬ 
lished as the Christian day of worship, by A. D. 140, 
as we learn from Justin Martyr, while St. John may 
have died not till after the year 100; and this day is 
called the Lord’s Day in a letter from one high church 
official to another, in the year 170, that is, in a letter 
from Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, to Soter, bishop 



THE APOSTLES. 


51 


of Rome. These facts make it much more natural 
to suppose that the Lord’s Day meant the first day 
of the week. 

Again : Some have interpreted the passage in the 
light of 2 Pet. iii: 10, 1 Thess. v: 2, and other 
places, in which the day of final judgment is called 
the day of Christ, or of the Lord. Such make this pas¬ 
sage in Revelation refer to a vision of the Day of 
Judgment. Still others explain it as referring to the 
Gospel dispensation generally; but the immediate 
context, which plainly speaks of events which could 
only have been local and transitory, seems fatal to 
either of these interpretations. Also, as the Lord’s 
Day was, and is, ever appropriately used in part for 
Christian warning, rebuke, exhortation, and instruc¬ 
tion in righteousness, the general context (chaps, ii, 
iii), containing matter of this sort, which could easily 
be delivered and written in a short portion of one 
day, makes it much more natural to suppose that the 
day in v. to meant one day, and a day devoted to re¬ 
ligious purposes. The very early general religious 
use of the first day makes it further altogether prob¬ 
able that the one day was the first day of the week; 
although Scripture nowhere expressly identifies the 
Lord’s Day with the first day of the week. 

Dean Alford, the editor of a Greek Testament 
(quoted by Cox),*' states that, so far as he could as¬ 
certain, a recent German interpreter was the first to 


* Lit. of the Sab. Question. 



52 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


apply Rev. i: io to the Day of Judgment, and he ex¬ 
presses astonishment that such an interpretation 
could have been made. His own, supported by his un¬ 
derstanding of the early fathers, is that the passage 
refers to the first day of the week, as the Christian 
day of worship. 

But that all may the better judge for themselves 
between opposing views of the principal texts thus 
far quoted as showing apostolic practice, we will add 
the opinions of two distinguished writers, on the gen¬ 
eral question of the Lord’s Day as a Christian insti¬ 
tution. 

Sir William Domvill'e is praised by Cox, in his Lit¬ 
erature of the.Sabbath Question,* as having made in 
two volumes (I, An Examination of the Six Texts 
commonly adduced from the New Testament in proof 
of a Christian Sabbath), the most valuable contribu¬ 
tion of the present century to this question; and as 
having remained (in 1865), nine years unanswered. 

Domville’s proposition,! quoted by Cox, is, “That 
the observance of the Sunday, whether as a Sabbath, 
or as a stated day of assembly for the purpose of 
public worship and religious instruction, is not an in¬ 
stitution of divine appointment.” 

Dr. J. A. Hersey, in his Bampton Lectures for 
i860 (also highly commended by Cox for learning, 
sense, and candor—as well he may be), in speaking 
of the Lord’s Day, uses the more qualified terms, 


* Vol. ii, p. 357 . 


f Vol. ii, p. 185 . 



THE APOSTLES. 


53 


“divine institution ... as being indicated in the 
New Testament.”* In his article in Smith’s Bible 
Dictionary, on “The Lord’s Day,” he gives this clear 
and strong, temperate and admirable summary: “If 
the facts be allowed to speak for themselves, they in¬ 
dicate that the Lord’s Day is a purely Christian in¬ 
stitution, sanctioned by apostolic practice, mentioned 
in apostolic writings, and so possessed of whatever 
divine authority all apostolic doctrines and ordinan¬ 
ces (not temporary) can be supposed to possess.” 

These words have a delightfully scriptural tone. 
They harmonize with the spirit of love, to which an 
“indication” is abundant law; with the Gospel “lib¬ 
erty,” for which an indication is enough ; with the 
promised abiding of the Spirit in the Church as a 
guide to all truth (John xvi:i3); and with the un¬ 
broken perpetuity of the Lord’s Day as a witness, 
hitherto, to these harmonies. 

Therefore, though no peremptory order, no posi¬ 
tive “ Thou shalt,” be found in the New Testament, 
for the perpetual keeping of the Lord’s Day, yet the 
facts of Christian history show that what is therein 
recorded was sufficient, with the guidance of the 
Spirit, to enable the universal Christian conscious¬ 
ness to be a correct and sufficient law unto itself in 
this matter. 

But, once more: However conclusive this chapter 
and the last, taken together, may be, with those to 



54 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


whom divine indication and recorded inspired exam¬ 
ple furnish sufficient authority, there may be others 
to whom the explicit declaration of a principle , by 
which the Lord’s Day can be grounded on Christ’s 
authority, would give largely increased assurance. 
We think that Scripture meets the wants of such. 
In Col. ii: 16, 17, we read, “Let no man therefore 
judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an 
holyday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days; 
which are a shadow of things to come , but the body is 
of Christ .” 

Here, as elsewhere, in the Epistles to the Romans 
and to the Hebrews, it is clearly taught: first, in 
general, that the old dispensation is related to the 
new; second, that the relation is like that of shadow 
to substance, with the necessary inference of the su¬ 
periority of the substance to the shadow. Now the 
whole tenor of the New Testament teaching on this 
subject is, that this superiority consists, first, in the 
higher character of the new (Gal. iii: 2, 3, 19, 24-26; 
Heb. viii); and, second , in its universality and perma¬ 
nence (Heb. vii : 11—28, x 19-14; Rom. ix : 23, 24, 
x : 12). In particular, Col. ii: 16, 17, refers to the 
keeping of Jewish holy times, and of them as shadows 
of good things to come. There was, then, to be a 
Christian keeping of holy time. In point of fact, 
there has been—again to anticipate for a moment 
the testimony of history—an uninterrupted keeping 
of holy time on one uniform day since the beginning 
of Christianity. This, then, is, in the light of facts, 



THE APOSTLES. 


55 


a part, at least, of the “body,” of which the elder 
observance was the shadow, however we may judge 
that this “ body” includes, also, the constant rest of 
the Christian soul from ordinances which can not 
satisfy (Heb. x : 1-4). But, however this may be, the 
cardinal truth remains, that the body is of Christ. 
The Christian keeping of holy time, which, in his¬ 
toric fact, is the Lord’s Day, is of Christ; depends 
on him for its authority; is grounded on the crowning 
triumph of his earthly mission, the Resurrection. 

No treatment of this portion of our subject could, 
however, be considered complete, unless it embraced 
an attempt to treat the remarkable words of Heb. iv: 
8-16, with reference to the context. 

First. The fact is recalled to the minds of the 
Christian Hebrews, to whom St. Paul was writing, 
that “because of unbelief” (iii : 19), their fathers in 
the wilderness “ could not enter in” to the promised 
rest of Canaan (iii: 11, 18). 

Second. The apostle proceeds, agreeably with the 
principle laid down in Rom. iv : 11-16, that there is a 
twofold seed of Abraham: the natural, or “ that 
which is of the law” (v. 16); and the spiritual, or 
“all them that believe,” in other words, “that also 
which is of the faith of Abraham” (v. 16). As the 
diligent and pious Macknight says, “ With a sagac. 
ity worthy of the inspiration by which he was guided, he 
[St. Paul] proves from the oath by which the Israelites 
were excluded from Canaan, that the promise to give 
to Abraham and to his seed the land of Canaan for 



56 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


an everlasting possession, was really a promise to 
give to believers of all nations the everlasting pos¬ 
session of the heavenly country, of which Canaan 
was the emblem.” 

Third. For, as the natural seed, the Jewish nation, 
had already had both the Sabbatical and the Canaan- 
itic rest, for five centuries, when David, in Ps. xcv : 
ii, wrote of a-rest into which some should not enter; 
and as Christians of any nation kept not the sev¬ 
enth day, nor had the earthly Canaan for their pos¬ 
session, the rest spoken of as still remaining for 
“the people of God” (v. 9), could have been neither 
that of the seventh day nor of Canaan. 

Fourth. On the general principle of the epistle 
(Ileb. viii: 5, ix :g, 24, x: 1), and of St. Paul’s reasoning 
generally on the typical character of the old dispen¬ 
sation, both the seventh-day rest and the rest in Ca¬ 
naan were types of the Christian rest (Col. ii: 16, 
17; Heb. iv: 5, 8, 9). 

Fifth. This rest which yet remaineth (v. 9) is, by v. 
10, principally in the future, being subsequent to our 
ceasing from our own works, interpreted as our 
earthly works, hindered as they are by foes within 
and foes without. 

Sixth. But it apparently needs only an uninspired 
fragment of that sagacity which enabled St. Paul to 
develop the sure promise of eternal, heavenly rest, 
with the conditions for entering it, out of the prom¬ 
ise and conditions of rest in Canaan, to enable us to 
see what here follows; 




THE APOSTLES. 


57 


1. Certainty of future heavenly rest from sin and 
from all its attendant train of ills and sorrows is, of 
itself, present rest. 

2. Ceasing from evil works — our own works when 
unguided of God — is entrance into the rest of heav¬ 
enly peace of mind, so far as that is possible in an evil 
world; as has evermore been preached from the in¬ 
vitation to the weary in Matt, xi 128-30, and as is in¬ 
timated in Heb. iv: 3. 

3. The remaining rest is comprehensively, there¬ 
fore, that of the Christian dispensation, here and 
hereafter, — that of the kingdom of heaven below and 
above, — that of the Church militant and triumphant, 
which makes one communion. 

Seventh. Hence, as the rest in Canaan had its 
day , in which -to contemplate and enjoy its origin, 
meaning, and blessings, so the earthly stage of the 
Gospel rest has its day for like uses. That is, “day” 
in v. 8, and “rest” in v. 9,—literally, a keeping of 
Sabbath,— are both literal and figurative; pointing to 
the Lord’s Day, in which to recall and celebrate the 
history and benefits of Christ’s life, death, and glo¬ 
rious Resurrection; and pointing also to the Gospel 
dispensation as a rest, both from Jewish bondage 
and from Pagan darkness and misery. That is, in a 
word, if the rest in Canaan, which was a type, was 
two-fold, embracing a day , the Jewish seventh-day 
Sabbath, and a settled condition of rest, the rest from 
Egyptian bondage; the fulfillment should embrace 
both, as it does in the Lord's Day ; in memory of the 



58 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


Resurrection as the pledge of future blessedness to 
the Christian; and the heavenly Canaan, both the 
reality and the anticipation of which, now, is rest, 
and shall be eternal rest. 

We think we discovered, in the preceding chapter, 
a good and sufficient Scripture foundation for the per¬ 
petual Christian memorial day, the Lord’s Day. We 
now think, that in the present chapter we have 
strengthened the proof of the authoritative character 
of that foundation, by the view here afforded of the 
teaching and practice of the apostles ; and in the 
next four chapters we shall expect to show that our 
Lord has amply confirmed that character through the 
action of a permanent and widespread agency of his 
own establishment. We therefore may already con¬ 
clude that the Lord’s Day, whether explicitly com¬ 
manded to be kept, or not, had abundantly sufficient 
ground for being observed from the beginning, as a 
regular time devoted to great representative duties 
to God, to Self, and to the Brethren : To God\ by 
prayer, the celebration of the memorial feast of unity 
in Christ, and by hearing the Word with intent to do 
it; to Self, by present rest, in behalf of efficient, 
honest industry on other days, and for contemplation 
of the eternal rest, and preparation for it; to the 
Brethren, by sympathy, fellowship, and charity, of 
which alms-giving is a practical expression (i Pet. 
iv: 8-10). 



THE CHURCH IDEA . 


59 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE LORD’S DAY, AND THE CHURCH IDEA. 



E here use the word “Church” in the widest, 


V ▼ or — to venture to rescue a much-abused word 
— mast catholic sense, as embracing the sum total of 
Christendom, or of the baptised, or of the visible 
body of Christian believers and their households, 
from the beginning of Christianity to the present 


time. 


Using the term in this sense, the present chapter 
is devoted to the maintenance of the following prop¬ 
osition : 

The Christian Church , as a permanent, divme institu¬ 
tion among men , from a time shortly after the Resur¬ 
rection of its Divine Founder and Head, and as act¬ 
ing under the promised guidance of the Spirit of 
Truth, and as seen in its universal and permanent 
action, has a high degree of authority, as an ap¬ 
pointed witness and keeper of Christian usages, as 
well as of Christian records. 

The books of the New Testament were written, 
according to the results of the most diligent scholar¬ 
ship, at various dates during the second half of the 



6o 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


first century, and most of them between the years 58 
and 100. 

But the organization and spread of the Church be¬ 
gan, as we learn from the Book of Acts, very soon 
after the death of Jesus Christ, and had therefore 
been energetically and rapidly going on for about 
twenty-jive years before the writing of the New Testa¬ 
ment was begun , and for fifty years, or more, before 
that Volume was completed. 

Moreover, it must, in the absence of any but writ¬ 
ten copies, have been a still longer period before the 
several early Christian communities could each have 
possessed the entire Volume. 

We have thus fairly before us the important truth, 
that the Christian Church was in full and widely ex¬ 
tended operation, under the guidance of inspired 
apostles, for many years before a line of the New 
Testament was written, and for many more years be¬ 
fore that Sacred Record was completed and generally 
distributed. 

We can not, therefore, consider the New Testament 
branch of our argument for the Lord’s Day complete, 
until we have listened to what it has to say concern¬ 
ing the authority of the Church, as thus led and 
guided, and as consisting of the whole company of 
Christ’s followers throughout the world. Then, when 
we come to leave Scripture for history, we shall be 
prepared to judge correctly of the weight to be at¬ 
tached to the practice of the early Church, as we shall 
learn it from other testimony than that of Scripture. 



THE CHURCH IDEA. 


6 1 


But before proceeding to consider the utterances of 
Scripture on the authority of the Christian Church, a 
few general remarks may be made on kinds and de¬ 
grees of religious authority. 

Any article of Christian faith or practice may be 
said to be of immediately divine authority, when 
taught, or appointed, by Christ himself: as Baptism, 
the Lord’s Supper, his. identification of himself with 
his humblest followers, so that he is honored or de¬ 
spised in the honor or despite shown to them (Matt, 
xxv : 31-46), the doctrines and precepts of the Sermon 
on the Mount (Matt, v-vii), etc. 

Such article, again, is of apostolic, or of mediately 
divine authority, when taught or practised by the 
apostles: as the appointing of the deacons in Acts 
vi; the decision of questions raised by Gentile con¬ 
verts, recorded in Acts xv; the explicit order to 
Christian masters to receive returning Christian 
fugitives only as brethren beloved, and even as they 
would receive Paul himself (Philemon vs. 16, 17); the 
emphatic iteration, throughout the First Epistle of 
John, of universal love as the source of all Christian 
living (1 John iv : 7-21), etc. 

This distinction between mediately and immedi¬ 
ately divine authority is, however, more nominal than 
real, for it should never be forgotten that, in the 
great Forty Days between the Resurrection and the 
Ascension, Christ gave commandments to his apos¬ 
tles (Acts i: 2, 3, and St. John xx. xxi) and that we 
are therefore justified in believing that what they 




62 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


proceeded to teach and to do, as recorded in the Book 
of Acts and in the Epistles, was in pursuance of the 
instructions then received from him. 

Finally: Any point of faith, order, or duty may be 
said, in a good and safe sense, to be of ecclesiastical 
or Church authority, when it is witnessed to, accepted 
and agreed to, by all Christians, everywhere, as a 
part of “ the faith once delivered to the saints ” 
(Jude v. 3), otherwise called “the common faith” 
(Titus i: 4). 

We will now proceed to notice some Scripture 
teachings as to Church authority. 

I. (Matt, xvi: 18, 19, compared with xviii : 17, 18, 
and Eph. ii : 20) “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock 
I will build my Church ; and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it . . .” “If he neglect to 
hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen 
man and a publican. . . “Build upon the 
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
himself being the chief corner stone.” 

We may remark, in passing, that it is clear enough, 
from these passages, that Peter, alone, was not the 
foundation on which the Church was built ; as is 
otherwise abundantly evident, as, for example, from 
Acts xv, where James, and not Peter, presided over 
an important general council of the Church, and his 
“sentence,” or judgment, was adopted. Indeed, in 
connection with John xxi:i5, 17, it seems nothing 
extravagant to suppose that, but for the declaration 
to Peter separately (Matt, xvi: 18, 19), as well as to 



THE CHURCH IDEA. 


63 


the apostles generally (Matt, xviii: 18), he might, for 
his triple public denial of his Master, have been re¬ 
jected by common consent from being included in the 
foundation mentioned in Eph. ii: 20. 

Now, second, on these passages, principally : The 
principle set forth in them seems to be that what the 
undivided heart of the Church spontaneously dictates, 
enacts, and performs, shall be ratified and sanctioned 
in heaven, or by its Lord and Head, who pledges 
himself to be with it. If, then, the Christian world 
permanently observes the first day of the week as its 
day of holy rest and joy, in commemoration of the 
Resurrection,—as it actually has done for these eigh¬ 
teen hundred years and more, — then, we say, on the 
principle of v. 19, such day is of ecclesiastical author¬ 
ity ; not in distinction from, still less in opposition 
to, divine authority, but as the Church’s expression, 
under the Spirit’s guidance, of Christ’s own author¬ 
ity, than which there can be no higher. 

We, therefore, feel justified in saying that, if a man 
wilfully slights or neglects the day of sacred rest 
which is appointed by free, unanimous, and univer¬ 
sal— that is, by catholic — Christian consent, as sa¬ 
cred to the memory of Christ’s Resurrection, “let him 
be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” 
Thus, we guard against such excess of ecclesiastical 
authority as would consider a day appointed by a 
man, a conclave, or an “order,” or a head council, 
apart from the spontaneous dictate of the universal 
brotherhood, as having binding authority. Thus, also, 



6 4 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


on the other hand, do we guard against such religious 
independence, in the Church of any limited period, or 
region, as would lead to the doctrine deprecated by 
Doctor Hersey* and attributed to Calvin, Heylus, 
Bishop Sanderson, Archbishop Whately, and others; 
the doctrine, viz., that the Church now, or in any one 
age or nation, has such original and independent au¬ 
thority over holy days, that it might lawfully change 
the Lord’s Day to any other day of the week; or in¬ 
deed, as Thomas Arnold cautiously, and F. W. Rob¬ 
ertson more boldly, advocated, might abolish it alto¬ 
gether, as having outlived its usefulness, and as a 
clog upon the fancied higher spirituality to which 
all days would then be alike sacred, all alike Lord’s 
Days. So they should be, in one sense, since, whether 
we eat, or drink, or whatever we do, we should do all 
for the glory of God. But the power to do this, it may 
be fairly said, does not come from either the act or 
contemplation of eating, or drinking, or of whatever 
else we may do, but from the contemplation of God, 
and eternal things, and of our relation to them. And 
this, according to the ordinary laws of the mind, de¬ 
mands a special time for its fit and effectually uplift¬ 
ing performance; according to the ancient word of 
holy wisdom, “To every thing there is a season, and 
a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Eccles. 
iii : i ). 

Besides, as may well be added, in the light of com- 


* Bampton Lectures for i860. 



THE CHURCH IDEA. 


65 


mon observation, if, with all the facilities for a helpful 
Lord’s Day observance which are afforded by a 
general suspension of secular cares, pursuits, and 
pleasures, so many neglect the religious opportuni¬ 
ties of the day; what would not be the all-engulfing 
worldliness that would prevail, were every day in 
general, but no day in particular, to be a holy day? 

Finally, the glimpse, even of the legitimate powers 
and functions of the Church as an undivided whole, 
afforded by the passages now quoted, sufficiently 
guards what has been called the “ecclesiastical the¬ 
ory” of the obligation of the Lord’s Day, from degen¬ 
erating to the point of making that, and all other so- 
called holy days, of equal authority. The two thou¬ 
sand, more or less, of Romish saints’ days, with we 
know not how many in the Greek Church, requir¬ 
ing the wholesale commemoration of half-a-dozen 
daily; and even the modest score or so of days de¬ 
voted by the Anglican communion to those New Tes¬ 
tament characters, only, who were most closely con¬ 
nected with their Lord and ours; all these alike were 
appointed by more or less limited and local author¬ 
ity, and at different times. They stand, therefore, 
in every respect of subject, origin, and catholicity, on 
a far lower plane of dignity, significance, and author¬ 
ity than does the one always and everywhere celebrat¬ 
ed Lord’s Day of all Christendom. 

These views and principles, which flow so naturally 
and freely from only the few texts already noticed, are 
only strengthened by other passages like the following; 



66 


THE SUNDAY QUES7ION 


“And gave him to be the head overall things to the 
Church , which is his body, the fulness of him that fill- 
eth all in all ” (Eph. i: 22, 23). 

“ And ye are complete in him , which is the head of all 
principality and power” (Col. ii: 10). 

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness 
to every one .that believeth” (Rom. x:4). 

See, also, Eph. iii: 9, 10, v : 25-32; Col. ii: 17-19 ; 
Heb. viii: 7-10, 13, and xii: 18-24. 

Whatever else the passages teach, yet, in relation 
to the subject now before us, they seem to strongly 
conspire to show the entire completeness of the 
Christian dispensation in itself; that of “all things” 
which the Church as a “body” wants, all will be sup¬ 
plied from Christ the “head.” Whatever of truth or 
duty the Christian needs to make him “complete,” 
will be found in Christ, without necessity of recourse 
to Adam, Abraham, or Moses. All the “righteous¬ 
ness” to which the law leads, and more than all which 
it can secure, is found in Christ. Indeed, the fur¬ 
ther we are in time from the date of Christ’s Resur¬ 
rection, the more decisive becomes the longer-contin¬ 
ued testimony, afforded by the unbroken custom of 
the Church, in which he dwells by his Spirit, to the 
reality of the Lord’s Day as a divine institution, and 
therefore of perpetual obligation. Under the same 
condition,.the less, also, is the necessity for going out¬ 
side of Christianity for the grounds for keeping the 
day, while the nature of those grounds sufficiently 
suggests the manner of keeping it. The primitive 



THE CHURCH IDEA. 


67 


Christians, not having, as we have, the experience of 
over eighteen centuries of uninterrupted and general 
observance of the Lord’s Day, would, if any be the 
ones to feel tempted sometimes to reach back or out 
of the newly established Christianity into some longer- 
established, though declaredly preparatory system, in 
order to find grounds for their Christian usages. 

Nevertheless, as some, whether from constitution, 
associations, or training, turn to the Old Testament, 
rather than to the living Church, the body of Christ, 
when seeking for more explicit directions respecting 
the Lord’s Day than the New Testament affords, the 
following question naturally arises: Have we no au¬ 
thoritative guide as to which way to turn in reaching 
beyond the letter of the New Testament; whether to 
the wilderness of Sinai, or to the plains of Gennesaret; 
to Sinai, or to the Mount of the Beatitudes; to the 
“tabernacle of the congregation,” or to the “house¬ 
hold of God ”? 

We think we have such a guide, and that it is found 
in the New Testament itself, if any be wanting, addi¬ 
tional to what is afforded by the many references al¬ 
ready given in this chapter. It is found in the em¬ 
phatically stated contrasts between the two covenants. 

The essence of the Old Testament is law, letter, 
constraint, “do this and live,” while of the New Tes¬ 
tament it is love, freedom, spirit. 

Thus, the Old Testament further says, “Thus saith 
the Lord,” and “Thou shalt.” The New Testa¬ 
ment says, “ If ye love me, keep'my commandments ” 



68 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


(John xiv: 15). “Dearly* beloved”; . . . “Now 

I, Paul, myself, beseech you by the meekness and gen¬ 
tleness of Christ” ( 2 Cor. x : 1). “ Wherefore, holy 

brethren, . . . consider . . (Heb. iii: 1). 

“ My little children, these things I write unto you that 
ye sin not ” (1 John ii: 1), and many more like words. 

Moreover it is written, that “ Moses describeth 
the righteousness which is of the law, that the man 
which doeth these things shall live by them” (Rom. 
x :5), and “For it is written, Cursed is every one that 
continueth not in all things which are written in the 
book of the law to do them” (Gal. iii: 10). But again, 
the New Testament says, “In Jesus Christ, neither 
circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, 
but faith which worketh by love ” (Gal. v: 6), and 
“ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the 
law” (Gal. iii: 13), and “But now we are delivered 
from the law, that being dead wherein we were held, 
that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not 
in the oldness of the letter” (Rom. viii: 6), and “ [God], 
who also hath made us able ministers of the New 
Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit; for 
the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 
iii: 6), and “ Which things are an allegory ; for these 
are the two covenants, the one from the Mount Si¬ 
nai, which gendereth to bondage. . . . But Jeru¬ 

salem which is above is free, which is the mother of 
us all. ... So then, brethren, we are not chil¬ 
dren of the bondwoman, but of the free. Stand fast, 
therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made 




THE CHURCH IDEA . 


69 


us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of 
bondage” (Gal. iv : 24, 26, 31, v: 1). 

With such guides as these, it is difficult to under¬ 
stand how any Christian, seeking further author¬ 
ity for his faith and practice than is written in the 
New Testament, should think to turn elsewhere than 
to the established rules, customs, usages, and prac¬ 
tices of his brethren of the world-wide “ household 
or faith ” (Gal. vi: 10), which is “the household of 
God ” (Eph. ii: 19), especially when we recall that 
Moses was faithful as a servant, “but Christ as a 
son over his own house, whose house are we” (Heb. 
iii: 6). 

The abominations which have been wrought by ec¬ 
clesiastical authority, falsely so-called, have, however, 
naturally enough created a jealousy of every thing 
bearing that name. This fact makes it needful to re¬ 
peat : First, that such authority in a proper sense is 
that of the total collective membership (that is, of 
course, when questions of universal and permanent 
interest are to be considered); second, that even 
then, the only sure guaranty of the righteousness of 
the authority is, not in man, but in the promised 
abiding presence in the Church of the Holy Ghost. 

We can not fully and properly conceive the Church 
idea, without an apprehension of this important point. 
Let us, therefore, dwell upon it awhile, in order that 
we may then perceive its bearing on our subject. 

I. The Lord Jesus Christ is the supreme head of 
the Church, which is his body. The vital intimacy 




70 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


of the union of Christ as the head, with the Church 
as the body or the members (Eph. v : 30), is a fre¬ 
quent and favorite image in the New Testament, 
whether it be the headship of the head of the indi¬ 
vidual body, as in Eph. iv : 15, 16, or the headship of 
the man as the head of the family body, as in Eph. 
v : 25, 28, 32. Indeed, our Lord himself explicitly 
and memorably declares both the wondrous closeness 
of the union between himself and his Church, and 
its comprehensiveness , in words, which even inspira¬ 
tion itself would hardly embolden an apostle to use, 
recorded in John xvii: 11, 20, 21. Praying for the 
apostles in his long, last conversation with them 
(John xiii: 31-xviii: 1), he says (v. 11), “Holy Father, 
keep through thine own name those whom thou hast 
given me, that they may be one as we are ” (x : 30). 
Then, that, in after ages, there might be no pretext 
for believing that the Church consisted only of its 
leaders, or officers, it is added (vs. 20, 21), “Nei¬ 
ther pray I for these alone, but for them also 
which shall believe on me through their word: that 
they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, 
and I in thee, that they also may fie one in us : 
that the world may believe that thou hast sent 
me.” Again, in v. 23, “ I in them, and thou in me, 
that they may be made perfect in one.” Now from 
this, to which no comment can add any thing, either 
of strength or clearness, we pass to the next point. 

II. The Son, thus the supreme, ever-living, divine 
head of the Church, to whom all power is given in 



THE CHURCH IDEA. 


7 1 


heaven and earth (Matt, xxviii: 18); into whose 
hands all things are given (John iii 135); and who is 
described as the active agent in creation, and heir of 
all things (Heb. i: 2, 10),—this Son possesses the gift 
of the Spirit without measure (John iii: 34). This 
gift, too, is his to impart, as we first learn by the 
eventful time of his Baptism (John 1:31, 32), and 
then from his own lips (xv : 26, and xvi: 7), and 
from the agreement of Rom. viii 19 with John xv: 26. 

III. But not only is Christ the supreme head of 
his body, the Church, and empowered and enabled, if 
need be, to impart to it the Spirit; but the Spirit 
actually is imparted, and is the agent by whose in¬ 
dwelling the vital union between the members and 
the living head is maintained. This we learn from 
passages like the following: “ Know ye not that ye are 
the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwell- 
eth in you ?” (1 Cor. iii: 16). “ But the anointing [com¬ 
pare Acts x: 38, 44, 45], which ye have received of 
him, abideth in you ” (1 John ii: 27). “And hereby we 
know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he 
hath given us ” (1 John iii: 24). “ In whom [Christ] all 
the building fitly framed together groweth unto an 
holy temple in the Lord ... for an habitation 
of God through the Spirit. . . .” “ There is one 

body and one Spirit . . (Eph. ii: 21, 22, and 

iv : 4). See, also, 1 Cor. xii : 13. 

From the fact of the abiding presence of the Holy 
Spirit in the Church of Christ, we proceed to learn 
its use. 



72 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


IV. The offices of the Spirit, indwelling and abid¬ 

ing in the Church, and, as shown above, throughout 
the entire extent of its membership, we learn from 
passages such as these following: “ Howbeit, when he, 
the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all 
truth: for he shall not speak of himself: but whatso¬ 
ever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will 
show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for 
he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you” 
(John xvi: 13, 14)—expressions seeming to signify in 
human language the perfect unity in trinity of the 
Godhead. “ All things that the Father hath are mine; 
therefore, said I, that he shall take of mine and show 
it unto you,” — showing, as we are constrained to re¬ 
mark, incidentally, that in showing what is Christ’s, 
he shows what is the Father’s, or that nothing more 
would exist to be shown after showing all that is of 
Christ, thus agreeing perfectly with John v.*25, x: 
30, xiv : 9. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but 
the same Spirit . . . But all these worketh that 

one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man 
severally as he will” (1 Cor. xii :4-11). 

V. Among illustrations of the practical effect of 
an abiding presence of the Holy Ghost as the prin¬ 
ciple of life in the Church, considered as the body of 
which Christ is the head\ see, in general, the first 
nine chapters of the Book of Acts, the book which 
is for all time and peoples, volume first of the history 
of the Church. In these chapters, we behold an 
energetic activity of the company of the apostles, 



THE CHURCH IDEA. 


73 


with their authority unquestioned and unopposed, and 
all under the guidance of the Holy Ghost (ii: 33, 
iv : 8, vi: 3, 5, viii: 15—17). 

Yet when any thing unprecedented occurred, or was 
proposed, Catholic consent, that is, the intelligent con¬ 
sent of the entire brotherhood, was necessary, as we 
learn from Acts x : 44-48, and xi: 1 — 18, which de¬ 
scribe the case of Peter and Cornelius, the centu¬ 
rion; and from chap. xv:vs. 22 and 28, especially, 
in which we have the proceedings of the first apos¬ 
tolic council of the Church.* 

Many able and devout writers might be quoted to 
show that this doctrine of the adaptation to man’s 
spiritual wants, of organized Christianity, or the 
Church, governed by its kingly Head, through the in¬ 
dwelling guidance of the Spirit, is no novelty. But 
we must be content with a reference to only one, 
who writes thus : “The constant mention of the Holy 
Spirit, the constant recognition of the supremacy of 
the Holy Spirit, is more characteristic of this book 
[The Acts of the Apostles] as regards religious teach¬ 
ing, than any thing else . . . The history of the 

early days of the Christian Church, as told in the 
Acts, is, so to speak, a speciman of the way in which 
the Lord Jesus will continue ‘to do and to teach,’ 
from his Royal Throne in Heaven, by the power of 

* For a much more extended development of this sacred sub¬ 
ject than our present purpose calls for, see the Bampton Lec¬ 
tures for 1868, and “The Presence and Office of the Holy 
Spirit,” by Bishop Webb. London. 1881. 



74 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


the Holy Ghost sent down, according to his own sol¬ 
emn words to his diciples, the night before the Cross 
. . . The supremacy of the Holy Ghost: this is 

the point to which I am always led, upon a careful 
study of the Acts of the Apostles, the supremacy of 
the Holy Ghost in our system of doctrine, and in the 
individual life.”* 

Let now the fact and the strength of this suprem¬ 
acy of the Holy Ghost in the Church, thus revealed 
in the Scriptures, and devoutly testified to by studi¬ 
ous believers, be our satisfying pledge that the whole 
and. permanent body of Christ is, and will be, guided 
into all truth. 

And now, what is the bearing upon our subject of 
this truth of the pervasive indwelling of God the 
Holy Ghost in the body of Christ? We have found 
a divine institution with a divine Founder and Head. 
We have the doctrine of the Church, purified from 
the corruption that the guiding and controlling pres¬ 
ence of the Spirit is confined to a class, forming an 
ecclesiastical caste, dissociated, too, it may happen, in 
interests and sympathy, from the general body of 
mankind. 

With the idea of the Church of the living God, the 
pillar and ground of the truth, thus purified, can any 
one fail to see that a day kept by the entire Church 
from the beginning, as a sacred memorial of the crown- 

* Dean Howson in the Bohlen Lectures, on the Acts of the 
Apostles, 1880, p. 177, etc. 



THE CHURCH IDEA. 


75 


ing act of the earthly mission of its divine Founder, 
a day kept perhaps without a break from the very day 
of the Resurrection, and certainly never lost, is as 
truly a divine institution as any thing designed for use 
by and among mankind can be ? 

With this perfected, and comprehensive, and ele¬ 
vated idea of the Church, as guarded and sanctified by 
the presence of the Spirit in all the length and breadth 
of its membership, is it not clear that its universal 
and permanent doings are his doings, or have his 
sanction ? Is it not clear that however interesting , 
and in some sense useful , because confirmatory, it may 
be, to go back of Christianity to find foreshadowings, 
in the Patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, of what 
the Christian enjoys, it can never be necessary to go 
there to find the immediate grounds and authority for 
his practice? Is it not clear that, in this uplifting 
doctrine of the Church, added to the arguments of 
the preceding chapters, we have the abundant and 
satisfying answer to the objection, that there is no 
explicit command in the New Testament to keep 
holy the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day? 
And, finally, is it not clear that the Divine exaltation 
of the Head, the ever-suggesting presence of the 
Spirit, and the grand significance of the act com¬ 
memorated, are enough as guides to a proper observ¬ 
ance of his day by all his faithful followers; — so 
truly enough, that if these fail as constraining guides, 
nothing else would draw, win, or bind them ? 

Yes, we believe these things are clear: that from 



76 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


whatever point of view we start, and whatever path 
of reasoning we pursue, we ever reach the same con¬ 
clusion, that Christianity is complete in itself, 
having solid and ample grounds, within itself, for all 
its requirements of faith and practice. 

Yes, this doctrine of the active presence of God, 
the Holy GhosJ:, of God as an in-dwelling, directing, 
and guiding Spirit, in the kingdom of Christ on earth, 
greatly reassures the Christian of his correctness and 
safety in looking for the grounds of all his practice, 
only in the teachings (including the indicative acts) 
of Christ, his apostles, and his Church, which is his 
body; that is, without anxious and wearisome search 
for these grounds through the Mosaic or the Patriarchal 
dispensations, or through the realm of Nature and ex¬ 
perience, with any such thought as that Christianity, 
in the person of Christ, his apostles, and his collec¬ 
tive Church, is not entirely complete in itself, in af¬ 
fording the sufficient ground for every Christian duty. 

From the Church idea, thus worked out with some¬ 
what of carefulness and thoroughness, and, as we 
hope, well appreciated, we may proceed to listen to 
the testimony of the Christian ages from the begin¬ 
ning. 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


77 


CHAPTER V. 

THE LORD’S DAY IN THE PRIMITIVE 
CHURCH. 

H AVING now carefully considered the Lord’s 
Day in the light of the New Testament, and 
having sought to make it clear that the Christian of 
to day would naturally turn next, for further and con¬ 
firmatory grounds of his practice, to the action of 
the Christian Church, — the “body” of Christ which 
he “loved,” and for which he “gave himself,” which 
is preserved by his power and guided by his Spirit,— 
we accordingly turn to consider the testimony of the 
primitive Church, on the question of keeping the 
Lord’s Day. 

By the primitive Church, we here mean the Church 
of the period from about the year ioo to the year 
325, the date of the meeting of the famous Council 
of Nice. This was the period when persecution, 
and independence of the State, both acted to make 
the Church peculiarly the kingdom of God in the 
world, but disentangled from weakening, compromis¬ 
ing, adulterating alliance with the world. Both by 
its character and its nearness to the facts, therefore, 
it was best fitted to witness, through its earliest wri- 



78 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


ters after the apostles, as to the distinctive character 
and acknowledged obligation of the Lord’s Day, as 
known to it by inheritance from the apostolic Church. 

By means of this testimony,* we expect to estab¬ 
lish the following proposition: 

The primitive Church, uniformly , for more than 
two hundred years, religiously kept the first day of 
the week, under the name of the Lord’s Day, in com¬ 
memoration of the risen Lord, and in distinction 
from the Sabbath of the Mosaic dispensation. 

i. St. John died at a date which various and un¬ 
certain tradition places anywhere from A. D. 89 to 
A. D. 120—probably, therefore, not very far from 
the year 100. Ignatius was a disciple of St. John, 
and hence was well informed relative to apostolic 
views and practices. In the Epistle to the Magne- 
sians, attributed to him, and written in about the 
year 101, he twice mentions the Lord’s Day, and 
calls it the queen and prince of all days. And 
though the genuineness of this, and of much else 
that has been credited to Ignatius, is disputed, yet it 
is undoubted, that it reflects early opinion, and also 
that he argued that if the most holy prophets — like 
Isaiah, who anticipated the spirituality of Christian¬ 
ity— lived the life of Christ, or as would become 
disciples of Christ, much more should Christians live 

* Dr. Hessey, Bampton Lectures for i860; Cox’s Literature 
of the Sabbath Question, Edinburgh, 1865; and the Ante-Nicene 
Library. 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


79 


according to the rules of Christianity, as distin¬ 
guished from those of Judaism. 

The Epistles of Ignatius have come to us in a 
shorter and a longer form, of which the former is 
thought by scholars to be the more probably genu¬ 
ine. The shorter version of that to the Magnesians 
says: “If, therefore, those who were brought up in 
the ancient order of things have come to the posses¬ 
sion of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, 
but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on 
which also our life has sprung up again by him, and 
by his death,” etc.* 

2. An ancient epistle of unknown authorship — 
erroneously ascribed to St. Barnabas, who lived in 
the first century — but known to have existed in the 
second century, says : “ We celebrate the eighth day 
with joy, on which, too, Jesus rose from the dead.” 

The “eighth day” here means the first day of a 
new week, or the day after the seventh, which the 
Jews observed. 

By a somewhat similar turn of thought, some have 
noticed that, while God’s Sabbath at Creation was 
the seventh day of his creative work, it was, as men¬ 
tioned before, the first full day of Adam’s earthly ex¬ 
istence. Thus, in connection with the thought of 
Christ, the universal Saviour, as the active agent in 
Creation (Heb. i), the first day has been regarded as 
the proper universal and permanent Sabbath, while 


* Ante-Nicene Lib., vol. i, p. 181. 



8 o 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


the seventh day was temporary and limited to the 
Jeivs. 

3. The celebrated letter of Pliny to the Emperor 
Trajan, written not far from the beginning of the 
second century, while the former was governor of 
Pontus and Bithynia, declares as follows: “ The 
Christians affirm the whole of their error to be, that 
they were accustomed to assemble together on a stat¬ 
ed day , before it was light, and to sing hymns to 
Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by a sacra¬ 
ment .” 

4. Justin Martyr lived in the first half of the sec¬ 
ond century, and, from being'a student of Greek phi¬ 
losophy, became an able advocate of Christianity. 

The following passage from his Apology for the 
Christians to Antoninus Pius* — the Roman emper¬ 
or (A. D. 86-161) — has been thought to be the most 
important one in any of the Fathers concerning the 
Lord’s Day; it was written between the years 139 
and 150: “On the day which is called Sunday , there 
is an assembly in one place, of all who dwell either in 
towns or in the country; and the Memoirs of the 
Apostles, or the writings of the Prophets, are read, as 
long as the time permits. Then, when the reader 
hath ceased, the President delivers a discoiwse, in 
which he reminds and exhorts them to the imitation 
of all these good things. We then all stand up to¬ 
gether, and put forth prayers. Then, as we have al- 


See Hessey; and Cox, Lit. Sab. Question, II, p. 4. 




IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


81 


ready said, when we cease from prayer, bread is 
brought, and wine, and water; and the President in 
like manner offers up prayers and praises with his ut¬ 
most power (or to the best of his ability) ;* and the 
people express their assent by saying, Amen. The 
consecrated elements are then distributed and received 
by every one; and a portion is sent by the deacons 
to those who are absent. 

“ Each of those, also, who have abundance, and are 
willing, according to his choice, gives what he thinks 
fit; and what is collected is deposited with the Pres¬ 
ident, who succors the fatherless and the widows, 
and those who are in necessity from disease or any 
other cause; those, also, who are in bonds, and the 
strangers who are sojourning among us ; and, in a 
word, takes care of all who are in need. 

“We all of us assemble on Sunday, because it is 
the fiist day, in which God changed darkness and 
matter, and made the world. On the same day, also, 
Jesus Christ, our Saviour, rose from the dead. For 
he was crucified the day before that of Saturn; and 
on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of 
the Sun, he appeared to his apostles and disciples, 
and taught them what we now submit to your consid¬ 
eration/’ 

Now, in order that this full and luminous account 
should make only its just impression on the mind, 
let us make a brief parallel statement of the corre- 


* Ante-Nicene Lib., vol. ii, p. 65. 



82 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


sponding facts of to-day, thus : Between the hours of 
ten and eleven in the morning, sometimes earlier, it 
is the American custom to assemble every Sunday in 
the church-buildings. Some music on an instrument, 
which we call an organ, first occupies the time in 
many places for a few moments, while the people are 
getting composed in their places. Then the service 
follows, embracing prayers, the people either uniting, 
or responding by saying Amen, or other words; the 
singing or chanting of hymns or portions of the 
psalms; the reading of one or more portions of 
Scripture; a sermon; often or always a voluntary 
contribution for some local or general religious or 
benevolent object; and the celebration of the Lord’s 
Supper, at intervals varying generally from a week to 
two months. There is usually a second service, gen¬ 
erally similar to the first, either in the afternoon or 
evening; also, a special service, called a Sunday 
school, for the instruction of children and youth in 
the doctrines and duties of Christianity. 

Now, with our own knowledge of present facts, do 
we not see clearly that, if this accotmt alone, of these 
facts were to remain and be found two thousand years 
hence, the people of those times would have a sub¬ 
stantially correct account of present American re¬ 
ligious usages, and that they might accurately judge 
this to be an account of what long had been, and long 
would be, substantially the same ? Likewise, there¬ 
fore, seeing that the elements of Christian worship 
now are the same that Justin has told us existed in his 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


83 


day, may we not as accurately judge that his account 
represents such worship, as it already long had been 
in his day, even back, probably not more than fifty 
years, to the lifetime of St. John the Apostle? 

Finally, to show more perspicuously the scriptural 
character of all that Justin records, let us place its 
elements in a tabular form, with the Scripture war¬ 
rant for each, under Christianity: 

1. The assembling on Sunday. Acts xx : 7; Heb. x : 25. 

2. Scripture reading. Col. iv:i6; 1 Thes. v:27. 

3. A sermon. Acts xx : 7; 2 Tim. iv : 2; Titus i: 3, etc. 

4. Prayers. Acts i: 14, ii:42; 1 Tim. ii:i. 

5. The Lord’s Supper. Acts ii: 42, xx : 7. 

6. Alms-giving and contributions. 1 Cor. xvi: 2, ix:i4; Heb. 

vi: 10. 

7. Singing praises. 1 Cor. xiv:i5; Heb. ii:i2. 

On this full exhibition of the testimony of Justin 
Martyr we have only to make this obvious remark, 
that any secular labors or pleasures consistent with a 
hearty participation in the exercises therein described, 
must of necessity have been quite incidental, brief, 
and subordinate; not requiring laborious preparation, 
concerted action, or long continuance, occupying the 
most and best of the day, as in excursions by land or 
water. Time for these can, without a doubt, be made 
in most cases on other days, by any person leading a 
conscientiously well-regulated life, and who has a 
mind to do so. 

Although this exhibition of the testimony of Justin 
Martyr, and its easy connection with apostolic prac- 




8 4 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


tice, might, alone, seem sufficient to settle the whole 
question, we are able to reinforce it by quite a num¬ 
ber of other witnesses. 

5. Bardesanes, a celebrated Gnostic and original 
thinker, but who always remained a member of the 
Church, was considered one of the ablest defenders of 
Christianity, and was famed, moreover, for his hymns. 
He wrote a work, the only one of his which has come 
down to us, on “Fate,” inscribed to the Emperor 
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, a circumstance, which, 
almost alone, fixes his date at about the year 170. In 
this work he speaks of the new people, called 
Christians, of whom he says, “whom, in every country 
and in every region, the Messiah established at his 
coming; for, lo ! wherever we be, all of us are called 
by the one name of the Messiah, Christians; and 
upon one day, which is the first day of the week , we 
assemble ourselves together, and on the appointed 
days we abstain from food.” 

6. It being a well-understood principle that inci¬ 
dental allusions to things as understood by everybody 
are among the strongest proofs of the reality of those 
things, it is interesting to note that Dionysius, Bishop 
of Corinth in the year 170, wrote a letter to the 
Church in Rome, in which occurs this expression : 
“To-day we kept the Lord’s Day holy, in which we 
read your letter.” 

This action recalls the fact that, while Clement of 
Rome (A. D. 30-100) is not now known from writ¬ 
ings believed to be his, to directly testify to the 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


*5 


keeping of the Lord’s Day, yet several ancient 
writers mention the custom of reading his letters to 
the Corinthians in the churches on Sundays.* 

7. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, a contemporary of 
Dionysius, is said to have written, among other 
works, one on the Lord’s Day, a circumstance which 
proves not only the existence, but the importance, of 
the day. 

8. The next, and a very important, witness is 
Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in the year 178. Though 
not strictly necessary, it lends interest to his testi¬ 
mony to catch even a glimpse, only, at the Church 
relations of this man, and indeed enables us to ap¬ 
preciate better the bearings of that testimony on 
other points which will yet come up. 

Jerusalem, and not Rome, was, as is well known, 
the original seat of Christianity. At the great Pen¬ 
tecost (Acts ii), there were “ strangers from Rome,” 
who may have carried Christianity with them to their 
homes. A general council at Jerusalem, with St. 
James, not St. Peter, for its head, issued binding 
decrees (Acts xv), and there St. Paul repaired, as to a 
recognized center, to report his missionary tour (Acts 
xxi: 18), before Christianity had gained any recorded 
standing in Rome. Also, “beginning at Jerusalem,” 
the apostles and other first missionaries went forth 
to be witnesses, “unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth ” (Luke xxiv : 47; Ps. ii : 8). 


Encyc. Britannica, ixth Ed., Art. “Apostolic Fathers.’ 



86 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


Again: It is well known that when, in 449, the 
Saxon conquest of Britain began, the Christian 
Church was found already on the ground, as we learn 
from Gildas, the earliest British historian, and that it 
persistently remained there; though he confesses 
that, on account of the general destruction of records 
and monuments in the constant wars of those savage 
times, he can not tell who first introduced it there, 
though he affirms that Christianity reached Britain 
soon after our Lord’s Ascension. 

But a clue is found in the close and direct connec¬ 
tion which is well known to have existed between 
Lyons, as an important western center, and the East. 
Irenaeus, our witness, was its second bishop, and 
familiar with Polycarp, “the angel ” of the Church of 
Smyrna, and the disciple of St. John. Pie, moreover, 
wrote in Greek, and when, towards the end of the 
second century, a storm of persecution raged around 
Lyons, he sent his report of it, not to Rome at all, 
but to “brethren in Asia and Phrygia, having the 
same faith and hope.” Accordingly, the learned 
Mosheim reaches, by untiring research, the conclu¬ 
sion that England first derived Christianity from the 
east through France.* 

This Irenaeus testifies as follows : “ Abraham, with¬ 
out circumcision, and without observance of Sabbaths, 
believed in God, and it was counted unto him for 

*For much more, like this, which is quoted not only as in¬ 
cidentally interesting, but for future use, see Lectures on Church 
Plistory, by T. W. Coit, D. D, 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


87 


righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. 
This is an evidence of the symbolical and temporary 
character of those ordinances, and of their inability 
to render the comers thereunto perfect.” But while 
he thus delivers his opinion on the abolition of the 
Mosaic Sabbath, his testimony to the general recog¬ 
nition and religious observance of the Lord’s Day is 
peculiarly conclusive, showing that the removal of the 
former by no means, in his day, left an unfilled 
vacancy. It so happened that there was, in his day, 
a spirited controversy as to whether Easter, the 
annual and special festival in commemoration of the 
Resurrection, should be celebrated on the day of the 
Jewish Passover, on whatever day that might occur, 
as did some eastern communities, or only on the 
Lord’s Day, as was more generally customary. 

Relative to this question he wrote, “The mystery 
of the Lord’s Resurrection may not be celebrated on 
any other day than the Lord’s Day, and on this alone 
should we observe the breaking off of the Paschal 
Fast.” This shows that there was a Lord’s Day, 
universally known as the Christian weekly holy day. 

9. Clement of Alexandria, though a mystical 
writer, makes it clear, both by inference and by direct 
allusion, that he knew the Lord’s Day to be a holy 
festival, generally known and observed. Living from 
about A. D. 150 to A. D. 220, he defines the Gnostics, 
or early Transcendentalists, as those who did not pray 
at fixed times or places, and thus shows that Christians 
generally did employ fixed times and places for wor- 



88 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


ship. He denies that God’s rest (Gen. ii : 2, 3) 
consisted in inaction, saying, “ He is good, and if he 
ever ceased to do good, he would cease to be God.” 
He thus reproves indolent ease as a counterfeit of 
holy rest. Moreover, he testifies to the Lord’s Day 
as an existing fact, and a day generally observed in 
distinction from the Jewish Sabbath. 

10. We next quote the distinguished father, Ter- 
tullian. Representing the latter part of the second 
century, he says, “We have nothing to do with Sab¬ 
baths, or the other Jewish festivals, much less with 
those of the heathen. We have our own solemnities , 
the Lord’s Day, for instance, and Pentecost.” The 
phrase, “or the other Jewish festivals,” shows his 
clear apprehension of the Jewish Sabbath as not 
isolated, but as a part in a sabbatical system , em¬ 
bracing new moons, seventh months, seventh years, 
and fiftieth years, and which, in his opinion, stands or 
falls as a whole. 

Also, to show his apprehension of the transient 
and the permanent in God’s dispensations (Gal. iii : 
16-19), he writes, “ He who argues for Sabbath-keep¬ 
ing and circumcision must show that Adam and 
Abel, and the just of old time, observed these 
things.” 

Tertullian, on the observance of the Jewish Sab¬ 
bath, says in conclusion, “Whence it is manifest 
that the force of such precepts [those of the Jewish 
law of Sabbath observance], was temporary, and re¬ 
spected the necessity of present circumstances, and 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 89 


that it was not with a view to its observance in 
perpetuity that God formerly gave them such a 
law.”* 

11. Origen (A. D. 185-254) represents a period 
but little later than that of Tertullian. He calls it 
one of the marks of “the perfect Christian to keep 
the Lord’s Day,” while he represents the Jewish 
Sabbath as having ceased, with all other distinctively 
Jewish things. 

12. Minucius Felix (A. D. 210) wrote a supposed 
dialogue between a Christian and a heathen, in the 
course of which the latter says, “The Christians 
come together to a repast on a solemn day,” thus 
alluding to the Lord’s Day celebration of the Lord’s 
Supper. 

13. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, wrote a synodical 
letter, jointly with his sixty-six colleagues in the 
Third Council of Carthage, in the year 253. * In this 
official church paper he makes the circumcision on the 
eighth day typical of the Christian’s newness of life, 
which Christ’s Resurrection opens to him, and an in¬ 
dex of the Lord’s Day, as being the eighth as well as 
the’ first, as we have seen in Chapter II that it 
actually was. 

14. Commodian, about the year 270, mentions the 
Lord’s Day. 

15. Victorinus (A. D. 290), a martyr to the faith, 
opposed the keeping of the Jewish Sabbath, saying 


* Ante-Nicene Lib., vol. xviii,p. 213, 



9 o 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


that it was abolished; but he advocated a holy keep¬ 
ing of the Lord’s Day.* 

16. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, A. D. 300, and 
another martyr, says of the Lord’s Day, “We keep the 
Lord’s Day as a day of joy because of him who rose 
thereon.” 

17. The ap'ostles further appointed: “On the first 
[day] of the week let there be service, and the read¬ 
ing of the Holy Scriptures, and the oblation [Lord’s 
Supper], because on the first day of the week our 
Lord rose from the place of the dead,” etc.f 

18. Archelaus, Bishop of Cascar in Mesopotamia, J 
in A. D. 277, writes: “We deny that he [Christ] has 
abolished it [the Sabbath] plainly, for he was himself 
also Lord of the Sabbath.” But he proceeds to ex¬ 
plain his meaning, by saying that the relation of the 
law to the Sabbath was like that of a servant to the 
bridegroom’s couch, keeping it undisturbed by any 
one until the coming of the master, who will do with 
it as he will. Now, as the first day has been almost 
universally substituted, from the beginning of 
Christianity, for the seventh day, and kept under the 
law of love, rather than that of “ ordinances,” we find 
no real inconsistency between this and other testi¬ 
monies. 

19. The Clementine Homilies (Horn, iii, chap. 

*Bib. Sac., Apr. 1881. 

f Syiriac Documents (p. 38), attributed to the first three cem 
turies; in Ante-Nicene Lib., vol. xx. 

| Ante-Nicene Lib., vol. xx, p. 373. 




IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


91 


lxix), on Heb. x:25, here mentioned out of chro¬ 
nological order—which would have put it first — 
because not explicit, says,-“But before all else, if 
indeed I need say it to you, come together frequently, 
if it were every hour, especially*?// the appointed days 
of meeting."* And another passage from Clement is 
supposed by some to allude to the Lord’s Day, 
though it be not mentioned by name.f 

We have now substantially covered the two cen¬ 
turies and a quarter, from the days of St. John to the 
famous Council of Nice, in the year 325, which 
marks the close of the essential independence of 
Church and State. For it was only four years before 
this date that Constantine, the first Christian em¬ 
peror, who was converted to Christianity in the year 
312, issued his famous edict commanding the general 
observance of Sunday, “ the venerable day of the 
sun,” as a day of rest, except from planting the fields, 
lest a favorable opportunity for so doing be lost. 

We may, therefore, pause awhile, to review the tes¬ 
timony now collected, even though it continues to be 
mostly of like character for two centuries more, when 
a still more marked change in ecclesiastical condi¬ 
tions forms a much more decided turning point in 
the history of the Lord’s Day, as we shall come to 
see. 

Not to lose sight, then, of our object while attend- 

*Ante-Nicene Lib. 

f Dr. Hessey, Bamp. Lects., p. 368; and (7) above. 



92 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


ing to the mass of testimony now presented, what 
have we found by it ? 

Bearing in mind the Decalogue as a brief summary 
or germ of the complete law of Moses; the progres¬ 
sive expansion of its parts into the detailed moral 
and ceremonial law; the Jewish Sabbath of the times 
of Christ, laden with endless and unmeaning super¬ 
stitions ; that all natural or moral duties are as such 
permanent; and that hence the Gospel did not abol¬ 
ish such duties, but placed them on new and higher 
grounds; we find that the early Church understood, 
in respect to the subject now before us, that, as the 
fullest abrogation of the whole law of Moses, as the 
ground for well-doing, did not abolish the duty of 
well-doing ; so the abolition of the Mosaic Sabbath 
did not leave an empty void, but took away the first 
that it might establish the second (Heb. x 19). The 
later and corrupted Jewish Sabbath was wholly swept 
away, so was the ceremonial or Levitical Sabbath, 
so was the seventh day ; but there remained the keep¬ 
ing of a day holy, to crown, and bless, and sanctify 
the week. That day was the first; its object, to com¬ 
memorate the Resurrection, with all the benefits 
from God and needs of man, which are linked to that 
mighty event; its authority, the example of Christ 
and his apostles; its motive, personal devotion to the 
risen Saviour ; its character, every thing spiritually 
sweet, sacred, and elevating, implied in its origin. 

If more is not to be learned from the Fathers, it 
is to be supposed, first > that it is because so much of 




IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


93 


all that was then written has been lost in the upturn- 
in gs of rude ages ; and, second , because the Lord’s 
Day was too well established to seem to them to need 
labored proof of its existence and authority. And 
if, as is the case, they do not appeal to the Fourth 
Commandment as the ground for keeping the Lord’s 
Day, nor anywhere mention a commanded and en¬ 
forced rest upon that day, it is not because it has 
only human authority or none, but because it has suf¬ 
ficient independent apostolic authority of its own, 
and is kept under the law of love and of liberty, and 
not under that of ordinances. 

We here subjoin an extract from a standard church 
history, which may help to show that we have not 
misunderstood the testimony already brought forward 
in behalf of the Lord’s Day: 

“ While the idea of the Christian life regards all 
our time as holy to the Lord, it was yet felt to be 
necessary that human weakness should be guided 
and trained by the appointment of certain days as 
more especially to be sanctified by religious solemni¬ 
ties. Hence, even from the very beginning of the 
Church, we find traces of a particular reverence at¬ 
tached to the first day of the week. The special 
consecration of one day in seven was recommended by 
the analogy of the ancient Sabbath ; the first of the 
seven was that which the apostles selected as com¬ 
memorative of their Master’s rising from the grave, 
with which a reference to the creation was combined. 

“ On this day, the believers of the apostolic age 



94 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


met together; they celebrated it with prayer, psalm¬ 
ody, preaching, administration of the Lord’s Supper, 
and collections for the needs of the Church ; and, ac¬ 
cording to their example, the day was everywhere ob¬ 
served throughout the early centuries as one of holy 
joy and thanksgiving. All fasting on it was forbidden ; 
the congregation stood at prayers, instead of kneel¬ 
ing as on other days. The first evidence of a cessa¬ 
tion from worldly business on the Lord’s Day is 
found inTertullian [about A. D. 160-230], who, how¬ 
ever, is careful (as are the early Christian writers in 
general), to distinguish between the Lord’s Day and 
the Mosaic Sabbath.”* 

On the topic of a commanded and enforced rest, 
with exclusive attention to spiritual affairs, excepting 
during the short time strictly necessary for providing 
for bodily wants, it should be said, as has been no¬ 
ticed by many writers, that such rest would have 
been wholly impracticable to many of the early Chris¬ 
tians, who were the slaves or children of heathen, or 
were public servants under heathen governments, 
and who therefore could not command their time. 
Even to this day there are cases requiring the char¬ 
itable application of the principle laid down in the 
case of Naaman, when on duty in the service of his 
heathen master, in the “house of Rimmon”: “The 
Lord pardon thy servant in this thing” (2 Kings 

* Hist, of the Christian Church, by Canon Robertson, M. A. 
(8 vols.), New York, 1874, 1:238 (supporting this paragraph 
by many references). 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


95 


v: 18), to which request it will be remembered that 
the prophet Elisha answered, “ Go in peace.” 

We will now proceed with testimony sufficiently 
representative of the two centuries after the Council 
of Nice. These may be considered as essentially 
primitive, or belonging to the period of the univer¬ 
sally accepted general councils, although the long 
nearly dormant seed of an altered condition of things 
existed in the fact of Lord’s Day observance being 
now made to rest, not, as before, solely on apostolic 
authority, and the general Christian conscience, but 
on that of the recently, and, as yet, imperfectly con¬ 
verted emperor, Constantine. 

1. The great Nicene Council recognizes the 
Lord’s Day as having had an unquestioned existence 
from the beginning of Christianity. 

2. Eusebius represents the time about the year 
316. He was famous as a church historian, and was 
Bishop of Caesarea. He mentions the Lord’s Day as 
well known even in the time of Irenaeus, already 
quoted; though he somewhat dims apostolic prece¬ 
dent, by eulogizing Constantine for his enactment 
concerning the day. But he speaks of the ancient Sab¬ 
bath as distinctively Mosaic, and as unknown to the 
earlier patriarchs, and, by implication, as not binding 
on Christians, who (Rom. iv.9-13; Gal. iii: 14) are 
spiritually the descendants of Abraham, while he, 
being yet in uncircumcision, was the father of all 
that believe. 

3. The famous Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria 



96 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


in A. D. 326, speaks emphatically in a work attrib¬ 
uted, though with some doubt, to him, of the Sabbath 
as the end of the Old Creation, and the Lord’s Day 
as the beginning of the New Creation. And he tes¬ 
tifies to his understanding that the latter day means 
the clay of the Resurrection, and is named from the 
Lord who then rose from the dead. 

4. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, A. D. 345, in lect¬ 
ures of instruction in Christian doctrine, says, “Turn 
thou not out of the way unto Samaritanism or Juda¬ 
ism. Reject all observance of Sabbaths, ” etc. This, 
however, does not mean the abolition of a weekly 
day of holy rest, but the discontinuance, in Christian 
times, of a Jewish seventh-day observance, instead 
of the Lord’s Day. 

5. Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, in 350, in a tract 
on the ninety-second psalm, which is a psalm for the 
Sabbath day, speaks of the Lord’s Day as better than 
the Sabbath ; and thus recognizes the existence, and 
the superior obligation, upon Christians, of the Lord’s 
Day. 

6. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in 374, and by some 
thought to be the author of the Te Deum, repeat¬ 
edly draws elaborate contrasts between the living and 
Gospel Lord’s Day, and the defunct and-legal Jewish 
Sabbath ; and thus recognizes the superior obliga¬ 
tion of the former. 

6. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, in 370, 
eloquently commends the Lord’s Day as the type of 
eternal, heavenly rest, and as the day on which 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 


97 


Christ rose, and in honor of which the “ Church 
prays standing.” 

7. The famous Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, A. D. 
395, and who, for theological genius, was the Calvin 
of ancient times, says, “The Lord’s Day (and certain 
other days) are Christian institutions.” “The ordi¬ 
nances of the Old Covenant were the burdens of 
slaves, those of the New Covenant are the glory of 
children.” He and others indicate a growing obscur¬ 
ation of the Lord’s Day by multiplied other days of 
human appointment; yet, in many places, he cor¬ 
rectly bases it upon the fact of the Resurrection. 

8. A celebrated document, of unknown author¬ 
ship and date, but probably belonging to about the 
year 400, and called the “Apostolical Constitutions,” 
says, among other things, “ Let the servant work 
five days, but cease from labor and be at church on 
the Sabbath, and on the Lord’s Day, that they may 
be taught religion.” “Assemble yourselves, espe¬ 
cially on the Sabbath Day, and on the day on which 
the Lord rose, the Lord’s Day.” This implies an 
assembling on other days than both of these, and 
shows the stealthy multiplication of days of human 
authority, tending to obscure the one distinctively 
Christian day of incomparable claims. In a word, it 
indicates an intrusion of Judaism. 

But at this point we are in fairness bound to say, 
that, in the light of history, Judaism is an ambiguous 
term, which may mean either the original or normal 
Judaistn of the Law of Moses, which, however good 





ca 


the sonda v question. 


in its time, is repeatedly and expressly declared to 
have been provisional, and superseded by Christian¬ 
ity; or it may mean the Pharisaical Judaism of the 
days of Christ, with its endless and frivolous refine¬ 
ments and glosses of the original Law,* which at no 
time had any right to be, and was in fact mainly a 
badge of national distinction, and a stimulus to a fa¬ 
natical kind of patriotism ; or, finally, it may mean the 
godlessness and looseness of life , complained of so bit¬ 
terly and denounced so strenuously by Isaiah, Amos, 
Zephaniah, and others of the prophets, and which the 
Fathers of the Church agree was true of the Jews in 
the period which we are now considering. And it 
would seem as if, while opposing this third form, the 
others were insidiously making their way into the 
Christian system. 

9. The testimony of Chrysostom, Bishop of Con¬ 
stantinople, A. D. 398, is particularly interesting, as 
showing that he understood 1 Cor. xvi: 2, as a scrip¬ 
tural authority for keeping the Lord’s Day ; and from 
its reference to St. Paul’s example at Troas, already 
mentioned. 

Passing over various other individual witnesses, 
whose testimony is to the same effect, we may con¬ 
clude by noting briefly that of various larger or 
smaller church councils, which, while doing and com¬ 
manding honor to the Lord’s Day, indicated a Juda- 

* See Geike’s Life and Words of Christ, under the heads 
“Rabbis,” “Sabbath,” “Water,” “Washing,” etc. 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


99 


izing spirit in two ways : first, by annexing pains and 
penalties to neglect to observe it in a humanly pre¬ 
scribed way, and thus training man to forget its char¬ 
acter as a blessed gift, a boon, a privilege, as even 
the true Jewish Sabbath was (Deut. v : 14); and, sec- 
ond, by the multiplication of purely ecclesiastical 
days. Thus: — 

1. The Council of Eliberis, A. D. 305, while earn¬ 
estly urging attendance at religious worship on the 
Lord’s Day, threatens suspension from communion 
to absentees on three successive Sundays, if living in 
a town ; and the Council of Sardica, in the year 345, 
took similar action. 

2. The Council of Antioch, in 340, and that of 
Toledo in Spain, in 400, thus quite far apart in time 
and distance, both enacted that attendants on Scrip¬ 
ture reading and sermons alone, who neglected the 
prayers and the Eucharist, should be excommuni¬ 
cated ; as if participation in either of the latter pos¬ 
sessed the least virtue, or meaning, unless intelligent 
and voluntary. 

Again, civil government, in its way, acted in the 
legal spirit manifested by the councils. That is, al¬ 
though the enactments were eminently proper, as to 
the end sought, they served to make civil law, rather 
than God’s law, written in the heart as a law of love, 
the ground of practical righteousness, and thus, by bas¬ 
ing the holiest things on an utterly wrong foundation, 
greatly endangered the things themselves; as we can 



IOO 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


see for ourselves now, wherever the same error has 
been committed. 

With this explanation, we proceed to note that 
Constantine prohibited all legal business on the 
Lord’s Day, except that of freeing slaves from their 
masters, and sons from their fathers — that is, manu¬ 
mission and emancipation. In A. D. 368 there was 
a law forbidding to demand payment of a debt from 
a Christian on Sunday; and in 386 another, forbidding 
what we might now call referee trials on that day, and 
declaring that violation of religious observances on the 
Lord’s Day was infamous and sacrilegious. Theodo¬ 
sius the Great, in the year 389, added to this, which 
he confirmed, an extension of it to include a total of 
a hundred and twenty-four holidays during the year ; 
and the law of^ Leo, Bishop of Rome, and Anthe¬ 
mius, Emperor of the West, in 469, stringently for¬ 
bade any compulsory legal process on the Lord’s Day. 

But with all the incipient corruptions arising on 
the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the 
State, the Lord’s Day still remains primarily ground¬ 
ed on the fact of the Resurrection, and on apostolic 
practice, without appeal to the Law of Moses, or to 
an assumed Patriarchal Sabbath, as necessary to 
give authority to it. Speaking of a portion of the 
period now under consideration, viz., of the latter 
half of the Fourth century, Canon Robertson* says— 
supported by various references: — 


*Hist. Christian Church, II, p. 54. * 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


IOI 


“The Lord’s Day was observed with greater strict¬ 
ness than before, although the distinction between it 
and the Sabbath, as to origin, authority, and manner 
of observance, was still carefully maintained. Con¬ 
stantine, as we have seen, ordered that no legal pro¬ 
ceedings and no military exercises should take place 
on it ; yet he allowed agricultural labor to be carried 
on, lest the benefit of favorable weather should be 
lost. The Council of Laodicaea, while it condemned 
all Judaizing in the observance of the day, directed 
that labor should be avoided on it as much as possi¬ 
ble. Theodosius, in 379, and again in 386, enacted 
that no civil business should then be done, and abol¬ 
ished the spectacles in which the heathen had found 
their consolation* when the day was set apart from 
other secular uses by Constantine. ” 

Summary of First-Day Reasons. 

If at this point, some, while admitting the neces¬ 
sity of expanded argument for other uses, may desire 
for ready use, a portable summary—so to speak — 
of good reasons for keeping the first day of the week 
holy unto the Lord, Christianity, of itself alone, gives 
them such reasons as follows : 

* Yet, such are the changes of time (to mention no other 
causes), it is, and long has been, on the Lord’s Day, that a whole 
people, from king to peasant, in a land claiming to be peculiarly 
Christian, attend the most revolting of spectacles — bull-fights! 
See Spain, by De Amicis, p. 178. 



102 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


1. God pointed out this day in being “him that 
raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead” (Rom. iv: 
24, also vi: 4, and x : 9; Acts ii: 24 ; 1 Cor. vi: 14; 
2 Cor. iv : 14 ; 1 Thess. i: 10; 1 Pet. i: 21, and many 
other passages). 

2. Christ marked the day by rising upon it. “ I 

lay down my life that I might take it again . . . 

I have power to take it again” (John x:i7, 18); 
“ He is risen, as he said ” (Matt, xxviii: 6), and other 
passages. 

3. The Holy Ghost sanctioned the day, by con¬ 
ferring miraculous gifts on the apostles on that day 
(Acts ii). 

4. The Apostles honored the day, as is more fully 
shown in Chapter III. 

5. The Prhnitive Churchy as we have now seen, 
celebrated it, with prayers, hymns, preaching, alms¬ 
giving, and the Lord’s Supper. 

6. The Church Universal , of all times and nations, 
has kept the day. Though the ground and the man¬ 
ner of doing so may, either, or both, have been dif¬ 
ferent at different times, and sometimes imperfect, 
the day itself has never been lost. 

7. All else being changed, in passing from the -Old 
to the New dispensation, the weekly-recurring day of 
sacred rest was appropriately not left an only excep¬ 
tion, but was changed also. The Law was changed 
for the Gospel ; the mediator, Moses, to Christ; the 
priesthood, from that of Aaron to the Christian ; the 
worship, from Levitical, or ceremonial, or typical, to 



IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


103 


spiritual; and the sacraments from Circumcision and 
the Passover, to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. 

8. As in the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, 
the human race had a new beginnings its new weekly 
holy day was fittingly the first day of the week. 

9. The seventh day, as that on which the Lord 
lay in the tomb, and hence the day apparently of 
deepest gloom for the hopes of Christianity, would 
have been the one most repugnant to just Christian 
sentiment, as in contrast with the triumphant morn¬ 
ing of the Resurrection; though most impressively 
emblematic of the extinction of the Old Covenant. 

Until, therefore, the time comes when there shall 
be reasons as many and as strong for the abolition or 
change of the Lord’s Day as those just given are 
for its establishment and continuance, we may rest 
assured of its preservation. And as we well know 
the Heaven-intended finality and perpetuity of Chris¬ 
tianity, we feel doubly assured that no such reasons 
will ever appear, and hence also that the Lord’s Day 
is of perpetual obligation. 



104 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE LORD’S DAY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 

O NE of the most widely useful of common princi¬ 
ples is that of the sufficient reason. One good 
and sufficient reason for thinking or doing thus and 
so—a reason which is readily intelligible to the prac¬ 
tical understanding—is enough ; even as in the simple 
matter of daily food, “enough is as good as a feast.” 

If, then, all understand the undeniable fact already 
mentioned, that the Lord’s Day has been uninter¬ 
ruptedly observed throughout Christendom for now 
nearly 1900 years, and if all also properly appreciate 
the principle that no such thing ever existed as such 
an observance, founded on nothing and meaning no¬ 
thing ; this will be enough to show from experience 
the well-grounded permanence of the Lord’s Day. 
It would, therefore, be only tedious and useless to 
make a detailed exhibition of the varied fortunes of 
the never-lost day, through all the vicissitudes of its 
history, among different peoples, and through the 
long-gone and generally forgotten Dark Ages ; differ¬ 
ing as they did so widely and so undesirably from the 
present. It may, however, be very useful to give 
such a sketch of the fortunes of the Lord’s Day, 



IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 


105 


when in the earthen vessel of man’s keeping, as will 
show how providentially it has been preserved to us. 
For we shall then cling to it more devotedly, as to a 
wonderfully rescued treasure, and shall find in its his¬ 
tory a new ground for its lasting obligation. 

The comparatively little, which, accordingly, seems 
to need to be said in this chapter, will serve to illus¬ 
trate the following general proposition : 

The Lord’s Day in the Middle Ages fell into 
various mischiefs relative to the doctrine and practice 
concerning it, as an incident of the general disintegra¬ 
tion of society, and recombination of its elements into 
new forms, caused by the attrition of domestic and 
foreign contests, and the infusion of fresh but bar¬ 
baric life into the decaying ancient civilization. 
Summarily, these mischiefs were a confusing of the 
Lord’s Day with a multitude of other holy days of only 
human authority; the grounding of it and them alike 
on priestly authority ; and the keeping of it in a legal 
spirit, and with many minute and burdensome pre¬ 
scriptions. 

To begin, however, by doing no more than simple 
justice to the Middle Ages, they should not be hastily 
dismissed with a sneer, for their art-work alone enti¬ 
tles them to respect. Yet they were, indeed, terrible 
times in which to live. From the extinction of the 
western division of the Roman Empire in the fifth 
century, southern Europe was overrun by savage 
hordes, against whom such civilization and learning 
as there was had to wage a life-and-death struggle. 



io6 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


Then before and after the long-deferred final extinc¬ 
tion of the long-tottering Eastern division of the 
empire, in 1453, the Turk, then in the full vigor of his 
career of fanatical ferocity, was the terror of Europe. 
Learning was buried in monasteries, religion and civil¬ 
ization were obscured in the dust of the contest for 
existence, and the millions of common people led a 
miserable life,‘blind with ignorance, ground down by 
despotism, and compelled to “ dwell in the midst of 
alarms.” 

The wonder really is that so much was saved as 
has been preserved to us, and the preservation of the 
day of the Lord through those troubled times gives 
it a new and lasting claim to our devout regard. 

In the dark period, from the sixth to the fifteenth 
centuries, and ending with the return of intellectual 
and spiritual light at the Reformation, we shall find 
the apostolic Lord’s Day injuriously obscured and 
perverted. The multiplication of so-called holy days, 
until no one could pretend to keep them all, led to 
the disposition to disregard them all. Then, to em¬ 
phasize, artificially, what God had emphasized both 
naturally, as the consecrating day of each week, in 
that the first is his due; and super-naturally, by the 
mission of Moses for the Jews, and by the mission of 
Christ for all mankind, Church authorities, fond of 
prescription, had recourse to the Law of Moses, to 
sanction their enactments. Then, having first justi¬ 
fied some of their appointed holy days, by their analo¬ 
gy to Jewish festivals, they proceeded to substantially 



IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 


107 


identify the Christian Lord’s Day with the Jewish 
Sabbath, in respect to the hedge of minute prescrip¬ 
tions with which the latter was surrounded. And, as 
we shall at once begin to perceive, sacerdotalism and 
Judaism were found going hand in hand. 

Thus, the Second Council of Macon, held A. D. 
585, undertakes to override the individual Christian 
conscience, by enacting that oxen shall not, on a plea 
of necessity, be yoked on the Lord’s Day, but that all 
shall employ both mind and body with hymns and praise 
to God; and it declares, significantly, that offenders 
will not only displease God, but will draw upon them¬ 
selves the “implacable anger of the clergy.” 

One of the kings of France, Clothaire (584-628), 
thinking, as others have done since, to make men 
righteous by law, prohibited all servile labor on the 
Lord’s Day. 

In the code of the Frank emperor, following the 
lead of councils, held early in the Ninth century, in 
the reign of Charlemagne, at Mentz and at Rheims, 
the following ordinance is found: “To yoke a pair of 
oxen to a cart and work by the side of it, on the 
Lord’s day, shall involve the loss of the right ox; 
to do other servile acts, prohibited by Canonical au¬ 
thority , shall render the offender liable to pay a fine 
to the clergy , and also to perform whatever penalty 
they may impose”; and “the judges are ordered to 
aid the clergy , and enforce obedience to their man¬ 
dates.” It is hard to resist the temptation to dwell 
on other points in this quotation, besides the ground- 




io8 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


ing of Lord’s Day observance on priestly authority, 
and the conformity of the observance to that of the 
Levitical Sabbath as a model; but we merely indicate 
by italics the subordination of the State to the 
Church, which in later times was so marked a feature 
of papal absolutism,—'inquisitors, for example, hand¬ 
ing over their victims to the civil authorities with 
mock exhortations to deal tenderly with them, when, 
at the same time, if the latter did any thing less than 
hang, burn or drown those victims, they would quick¬ 
ly meet a like fate themselves.* 

The exception made by Constantine in favor of 
farmers in the planting season, and continued in the 
famous Code of Justinian (A. D. 527), was repealed 
by their successor, Leo Philosophus, A. D. 910. 

It is neither necessary, nor possible, to quote all 
the authorities that might be found ; but it may be 
enough to select such as may represent successive 
ages and different nations.f In England, kings, 
councils, and archbishops, from the Seventh to the 
Twelfth centuries, co-operated in hedging about the 
Lord’s Day with a variety of restrictions, with pains 
and penalties attached to their violation, which, even 
if well meant, remind us more of the Sabbath pre¬ 
scriptions of the Rabbis, in the time of Christ, and 
which he disregarded and condemned, than of the true 
Mosaic Sabbath; and still more of them than of the 
apostolic Lord’s Day. 

* Motley’s Dutch Republic, Alva’s Administration, etc. 

t See in general Sunday, Dr. Hessey; Cox, Lit. of Sab., etc. 



IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 


109 


We find, for instance, the Council of Clovishoff, in 
744, forbidding traveling on the Lord’s Day; while 
a law of King Edgar, styled the Peaceable, ordained 
that Sunday should last from three in the afternoon 
of Saturday till the dawn of Monday. 

But it is here most useful to remember, that, as 
briefly indicated already, all this took place under 
the Roman captivity and corruption of the original 
Church of Britain, — the Church of Columba of Iona 
and others,—beginning with the mission of Augus¬ 
tine, A. D. 597.* 

We next quote the famous doctor, Thomas Aquinas 
(1224-1274) : 

After distinguishing the moral element of obliga¬ 
tory stated worship of God, from the ceremonial one 
of the seventh day as its time, he says, “ The ob¬ 
servance of Sunday under the new law follows the 
keeping of the Sabbath, not in consequence of a le¬ 
gal precept, but from the decision of the Church and 
the custom of Christians.” 

The aim of this profound scholar, in his great 
work, The Summary of Theology , has been said to 
have been the reconciliation of Faith and Reason, 
not in general, or in aid of all perplexed human 
thought, but in behalf of universal Roman suprem¬ 
acy.! It i s > accordingly, curious to note, that, in the 
above quotation, he ignores all but the alternative of 
Mosaic or ecclesiastical (meaning papal) authority. 

* See Irenaeus, in Chap. V. 

f Art. “Thomas Aquinas,” Am. Ch. Rev., Jan., 1873. 



IIO 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


But the Church, as a republic, rather than as a des¬ 
potism, finds, and loves to find, between these, and 
as the ground of real and wholesome church author¬ 
ity, the word and deed of Christ and the apostles, 
along with the doctrine of the guiding presence of 
the Spirit, in the entire body.* 

It is well worthy of note, seeing that bad things 
— among which we may reckon good things done for 
bad reasons, or on wrong grounds—keep company, 
as well as good ones do, that the doctrine of purga¬ 
tory ; masses for the dead (for money ); multiplication 
of saints’ days ; increased festivals in honor of the 
Virgin Mary; a passion for relics ; legendary lives of 
saints, greatly marred by fabulous traditions, and 
false teaching; superstitious pilgrimages, and the 
like, kept company with a greatly increased strict¬ 
ness in the ceremonial observance of the Lord’s Day, 
enforced by ecclesiastical legislation, not by enlight¬ 
ened general Christian conscience, acting in free obe¬ 
dience to the law of Christ. 

Says ('anon Robertson, again, of the Seventh and 
Eighth centuriesf (and, as usual, with many referen¬ 
ces to support him) : 

“A greater strictness in the observance of the 
Lord’s Day had gradually been introduced into the 
Church, and occupations, which councils of the Sixth 
century had vindicated against a Judaizing tendency, 
were now forbidden as contrary to the sanctity of the 
* See again Chap. IV. 

I Hist. Christian Church, vol. iii, pp. 239-241. 




IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 


111 


day, which it became usual to ground on the fourth 
commandment. Many canons throughout this period, 
and shortly after, enact that it should be kept by a 
cessation from all trade, husbandry, or other manual 
labor. No law courts or markets may be held, men 
are to refrain from hunting, women must not sew, 
embroider, weave, card wool, beat flax, shear sheep, 
or publicly wash clothes. No journeys were to be 
taken except such as were unavoidable; and these 
were to be so managed as not to interfere with the 
duty of attending the church service. The Peniten¬ 
tial, ascribed to Theodore of Canterbury, states that 
the Greeks and Latins agree in doing no work on 
Sunday; that they do not sail, ride, drive, except to 
church, hawk, or bathe ; that the Greeks do not write 
in public, although at home they write according to 
their convenience. Penalties were enacted against 
such as should violate the sanctity of the day. 
Thus, the Council of Narbonne, in 589, condemns a 
freeman to pay six solidi, and a serf to receive a hun¬ 
dred lashes. Ira, king of Wessex (A. D. 688-725), di¬ 
rects that if a serf work on the Lord’s Day by his 
master’s order, he shall be free ; if at his own will, he 
shall pay a fine, or shall suffer in his hide. The Council 
of Berghamstead (A. D. 696) enacts that a freeman 
breaking the rest of the day shall undergo the heals- 
fang (neck-catch)—that is, a sort of pillory—after¬ 
wards commuted by a. fine, graduated according to 
rank (that is, in obedience to the caste-spirit; that is, 
with the respect of persons which is most justly for- 



112 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


bidden by the Creator of all, to whom all are alike 
precious), and imposes a heavy fine on any master 
who shall make his servant work between the sunset 
of Saturday and that of Sunday. The authority of 
pretended revelations was called in to enforce the ob¬ 
servance of the Lord’s Day. It appears that this was 
the object of a letter, which was said to have fallen 
from heaven in A. D. 788, and of which Charle¬ 
magne, in his capitulary of the following year, orders 
the suppression ; and the same pious fraud, or some¬ 
thing of the same kind, was employed in England. 
Under Lewis the Pious, councils are found speak¬ 
ing of judgments by which persons had been pun¬ 
ished for working on the Lord’s Day — some had 
been struck by lightning, some lamed in their mem¬ 
bers, some reduced to ashes by visible fire. The 
clergy, the nobles, and the emperor himself, are de¬ 
sired to show a good example by a right observance 
of the day. 

“ But notwithstanding the increased severity as to 
the Lord’s Day, the idea of identifying it with the 
Jewish Sabbath was condemned. Gregory the 
Great speaks of this as a doctrine of-Antichrist, 
who, he says, will require the observance of both 
days — of the Sabbath, for the sake of Judaism; of 
the Lord’s Day, because he will pretend to rival the 
Saviour’s Resurrection. Gregory goes on to notice 
the scruples of some who held that it was wrong to 
wash the body on the Lord’s Day. It i-s allowed, he 
says, for necessity, although not for luxury, alike on 



IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 


113 


this and on other days, and he adds a curious attempt 
at Scriptural proof. The Councils of Lestines and 
of Verne censure an extreme rigor in the observ¬ 
ance of the day, as “belonging rather to Jewish su¬ 
perstition than to Christian duty.” 

In times which were themselves fast hastening on 
towards superstition, “Jewish superstition” probably 
here means the many glosses and subtleties added to 
the original “ law” by the Pharisees. 

Again, historically, and as showing the origin of 
customs once strictly observed in parts of our own 
country, and thus that “extremes meet,” it is inter¬ 
esting to read that “ The Lord’s Day was commonly 
considered to begin on Saturday evening, and to 
reach to the corresponding hour on Sunday. Such, as 
we have seen, was the length of the laborer’s rest in 
England, at the Council of Berghamstead (A. D. 
696); but by the middle of the Tenth century, it was 
extended, and reached from nones (3 P. M.) on Sat¬ 
urday to the dawn of Monday.” 

Thus we see the steady growth of ecclesiastical, 
meaning priestly, as distinguished from true Church 
authority, meaning by the latter, the authority af¬ 
forded by the free consent of the entire body from 
the beginning, considered as a Christian democracy 
or republic, not as a religious oligarchy or aris¬ 
tocracy. 

We also see the increasing fictitious characters im¬ 
posed on the Lord’s Day, and false grounds for ob¬ 
serving it, in order to keep it from being swallowed 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


114 


up by the multitude of other and rival days of only 
human appointment. 

We will now add only a few more examples,* if 
only to be consistent with the title of this chapter, 
by representing the remaining centuries before the 
Reformation. 

“In the Twelfth century, Bernard, Abbot of Clair- 
vaux, grounds the Lord’s Day, and the other holy 
days, on the Fourth Commandment.” 

“In England again, A. D. 1201, in the time of 
King John, Eustace, Abbot of Floy, preaches the 
observance of the Lord’s Day with a strictness em¬ 
inently Judaical, and descending to the most ordinary 
occupations. He professes to confirm his doctrine 
by a letter, purporting to be from our Saviour, and 
miraculously found on the altar of St. Simeon at Gol¬ 
gotha. Various apocryphal judgments overtook per¬ 
sons transgressing, in the slightest degree, the com¬ 
mands set forth in this document.” “ At length the 
Church, almost as a rule, though still asserting that 
the Lord’s Day, and all other holy days; were of eccle¬ 
siastical institution”—as established by the canons 
of Councils — “ had erected a complete Judaic super¬ 
structure upon an ecclesiastical foundation.” 

xhe following are specimens of some of the “judg¬ 
ments ” alluded to : “A woman, weaving after three 
o’clock on Saturday afternoon, was struck with the 
dead palsy. Corn grinded by a miller was turned 


*From Hessey, Sunday, Lect. III. 



IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 


115 


into blood, and the wheel of the mill stood still 
against the force of the waters. A woman put her 
paste into the heated oven, and when she thought it 
baked, found it paste still. I write,” concludes John¬ 
son (Coll., Vol. II, p. 95), “that no Protestants had 
vended like tales.” Our next chapter, however, will 
show that some, of an extreme reactionary kind, did 
so, long after, as we are right sorry to have to say. 

The ecclesiastical Sabbatarianism of the Middle 
Ages, meaning a Sabbatarianism grounded not on Mo¬ 
saic, but on contemporary Church authority, seems 
to have reached its height in the commentary on the 
twelfth chapter of Exodus by Tostatus, Bishop of 
Avila, in the Fourteenth century. 

“If a musician [says Tostatus] wait upon a gentle¬ 
man, to recreate his mind with music, and they are 
agreed upon certain wages, or he be only hired for a 
present time, he sins in case he play or sing to him 
on holy days (including the Lord’s Day), but not if 
his reward be doubtful or depend only on the bounty 
of the parties who enjoy his music.” “'A cook that 
on the holy days is hired to make a feast or dress a 
dinner, commits a mortal sin ; but not if he be hired 
by the month or year.” “ Meat may be dressed upon 
the Lord’s Day, or the other holy days, but to wash 
dishes on those days is unlawful —that must be de¬ 
ferred to another day.” “ A man that travels on 
holy days, to any special shrine or saint, commits no 
sin, but he commits sin if he returns home on those 
days.” “Artificers, who work on those days for 



116 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


their own profit only, are in mortal sin, unless the 
work be very small, because a small thing dishonor- 
eth not the Festival.” 

All this reminds one of the rules of grammar or 
spelling, having exceptions to the exceptions; or of 
the endless refinements of the Pharisees. And 
though, all along the ages, there were those who, 
while putting mere Church authority in the shape of 
that of Councils and a hierarchy — rather than that 
of the total brotherhood—foremost, did not so elab¬ 
orately Judaize, yet the extracts just given reveal to 
us, pretty clearly, the Lord’s Day as the Reformation 
found it. We shall next consider its history from that 
era forward. 

Let us not, however, in concluding this chapter, be 
understood as doing either of three things : first, as 
judging the Middle Ages too harshly ; or as favoring 
a loose and self-indulgent keeping of the Lord’s Day ; 
or as presuming to say that the attempts of those in 
power to secure its observance as they wished were 
not well meant, or that they were not^perhaps, even 
providentially necessary to the preservation of the 
day. 

But we do say that it can be seen, in the light 
of present knowledge, that there is a close connec¬ 
tion between ignorance and error and superstition ; 
that the keeping of the day should be voluntary, and 
for Christian reasons; and that the day should not 
be debased by putting it and days purely of human 
appointment on the same ground, and by enforcing 



IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 


ii 7 


even its right observance by humanly ordained pains 
and penalties. 

On the whole, we repeat that we may well be 
thankful that the Lord’s Day has survived the evil 
times through which it has passed, and may well ac¬ 
cept this fact as strengthening its claim to perma¬ 
nent regard. 



118 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE LORD’S DAY IN MODERN TIMES. 

B Y modern'times, we mean those beginning with 
the great Reformation in the Sixteenth century. 
In a detailed history of the Lord’s Day, a volume 
might be devoted to its fortunes since that great 
awakening. But the very fact that the Day survived 
the mighty changes incident to the overthrow of 
the Roman Empire, makes it less necessary to mi¬ 
nutely trace its fortunes through later times ; while 
also modern controversies respecting its character 
make it, in some respects, less interesting and profit¬ 
able to do so. We, therefore, here propose only to ex¬ 
hibit just enough of the modern history of the Lord’s 
Day to reasonably establish the following proposition : 

The Providential preservation of the Lord’s Day, 
not only through the darkness of the Middle Ages, 
but through the mighty upheavals, storms of contro¬ 
versy, and bold assertions of individuality, incident to 
the great intellectual awakening and religious refor¬ 
mation of the Sixteenth century, gives to the Day a 
strong additional claim to be regarded as of divine 
origin, and hence of perpetual obligation. 

Since the days of Luther and the other reformers, 
England has experienced the dynastic revolution of 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


119 


1688,. and has seen other great changes in Church 
and State. France has been monarchial, republican, 
imperial, and each more than once. Germany has 
been consolidated into an empire. Austria has passed 
from the most paralyzing absolutism to a compara¬ 
tively large measure of constitutional freedom. Italy 
has taken its place among the nations, united and 
free. America has been settled, subdued, peopled 
with the mighty overflow from Europe and elsewhere. 
Time and space fail us to tell of the revolution and 
advance in literature, art, science, education, govern¬ 
ment, social condition, and religion, which have accom¬ 
panied these changed national conditions, and which, 
indeed, are, in a general way, so well known as not to 
need rehearsal here. 

Papal corruption and the preponderance of merely 
Chu ch authority, provoked at the Reformation, as 
we shall see, a reaction to excessive views of Christian 
liberty (still too prevalent on the continent), but 
among those of the English race it led more to dili¬ 
gence in the understanding and restoration of the 
apostolic Lord’s Day, in a spirit of calm wisdom. 

From the sounder views which prevailed in Eng¬ 
land, partly, perhaps, because of its comparative free¬ 
dom from Roman influences, there came to be a diver¬ 
gence in three directions. One was towards a too 
exclusively ecclesiastical authority for a weekly holy 
day. Another was towards a kind of Judaism , as a 
reaction from the former, aided, as it would seem, by 
a feeling that the slender authority of the letter of 



120 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


the New Testament alone, for such a day, needed 
support from some quarter to make the observance of 
the day plainly obligatory. A third divergence was 
towards natural religion, as being, apparently, in the 
light of the long-accumulated experience of the 
later centuries, a sufficient ground for a weekly day 
of rest. In this third departure, it would seem to have 
been forgotten, that but for Christianity there might 
have been no’such guiding experience as is now pos¬ 
sessed, as is shown by the condition of the heathen, 
who have no day of holy rest. 

A brief, yet sufficiently full exhibition of the 
tonings of the sea of human opinion will only confirm 
our faith in the Lord's Day as a divine institution of 
permanent obligation , when we consider how glori¬ 
ously it has survived them all, in spite of the tenden¬ 
cy of human reaction to pass from one set of errors 
to an opposite extreme. There appears, therefore, 
no occasion for any attempt at concealment, since it 
would seem that an impartial exhibition of all varieties 
of opinion could only do good by showing that hu¬ 
man contentions and departures from sound wisdom 
and discretion have never been able to destroy the 
day which God made and gave to man. 

The Reformation found the Lord’s Day in an ab¬ 
normal condition in many respects. First, it was 
confused with an unmanageable multitude of other 
days, of later origin, of merely human appointment, 
and of vastly inferior significance. Second, the pre¬ 
tense of infallibility had elevated the claim of the 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


121 


Church to the possession of original authority, in¬ 
stead of permitting it to remain an agency for making 
known and perpetuating the faith once delivered by 
divine and apostolic authority. 

Third, this claim, at once portentous and groundless, 
manifested itself by prescriptive prohibitions and 
observances, minute and burdensome,—specimens of 
which we have seen in the chapter on the medieval 
Lord’s Day,—which prescriptions savored more of 
the Law than of the Gospel, more of Judaism 
than of Christianity, and even more of the absurdi¬ 
ties of Pharisaic Judaism than of primitive and pure 
Judaism. 

The result of all this imposition, grievous to be 
borne, was such a reaction ‘as might have been ex¬ 
pected. Holy days, founded on nothing properly 
authoritative, changing name and nature alike, be¬ 
came holidays devoted to idleness and dissipation. 
The people, having been taught to observe the Lord’s 
Day only on the authority of Mother Church, thought 
it of no higher sanctity than a thousand other and 
fictitious holy days; and proceeded, according to the 
logic of facts, as it seemed to them, to drag it down 
with the rest of the company with which they fouud 
it so mischievously and hurtfully entangled. 

As D’Aubigne says : * “In this way a profane 
spirit had invaded religion, and the most sacred rea¬ 
sons of the Church—those which most forcibly and 

* Hist, of Ref., Bk. I., ch. iii (based on diligent search among 
contemporary writers and documents), 



22 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


powerfully invited the faithful to self-examination and 
love—were dishonored by buffoonery and mere hea¬ 
then blasphemies. The‘Easter Drolleries’ held an 
important place in the acts of the Church. As the 
festival of the Resurrection required to be celebrated 
with joy, every thing that could excite the laughter of 
the hearers was sought out and thrust into sermons. 

“One preacher imitated the note of the cuckoo, 
while another hissed like a goose. One dragged for¬ 
ward to the altar a layman in a cassock; a second 
told the most indecent stories ; a third related the 
adventures of the Apostle Peter—among others, how, 
in a tavern, he cheated the host by not paying his 
score. The inferior clergy took advantage of the oc¬ 
casion to turn their superiors into ridicule. The 
churches were thus turned into stages, and the 
priests into mountebanks.” 

To make this horrid picture intelligible it should be 
further understood that gambling, drinking, concubin¬ 
age, and traffic in indulgences to^in, fora price,along 
with dense ignorance and feudal oppression, widely 
prevailed among the priesthood, and that, in spite of 
exceptions, public morals were in a fearful condition. 

Now it was from all this corruption that the Conti¬ 
nental Reformation was a powerful reaction. But 
there was, as we have just rehearsed, a compound 
error in the condition of the Lord’s Day, and differ¬ 
ent reactions were accordingly in different directions. 
That which occurred on the continent seems not to 
have been in the direction of Old English, or of early 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


123 


New England Puritan, or of Scotch Presbyterian 
strictness, but in that of allowing no adequate author¬ 
ity for the day, because Rome gave a false authority 
for a false use of the day. 

Thus Luther, in his “ Table talk,” shows how he 
and others regarded Rome’s position, and how he 
would meet it. Says he, with his characteristic heart¬ 
iness, “ If anywhere, the day is made holy merely 
for its own sake, if anywhere, any one sets up its ob¬ 
servance on a Jewish foundation, then I order you to 
work on it, to ride on it, to feast on it, to do any thing 
that shall remove this encroachment on Christian 
liberty.” 

He accordingly teaches that it is expedient that 
some one day should be agreed upon for the purposes 
of worship; and as an already long-existing day 
should not be arbitrarily changed, Christians might 
as well adopt Sunday for purposes of worship, as to 
appoint a new day, or no day, though they have a 
right to do either. 

Others* of the great leaders of the Continental 
Reformation, expressed similar views. 

Bucer (1491-1550) in a book entitled “Concerning 
the Kingdom of Christ,” and which he presented to 
the reforming king, Edward VI of England, as a 
New Year’s gift, says: “To think that working 
on the Lord’s Day is, in itself, a sin, is a supersti¬ 
tion, and a denying of the grace of Christ.” 

* Quoted by Cox (Lit. of the Sabbath Question), Hessey, and 
others. 



124 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


Peter Martyr (1500-1562), in answer to the ques¬ 
tion, why the Christian Church did not observe the 
seventh day, said, “ That on that day, and on all other 
days, we ought to rest from our own works, the works 
of sin [apparently alluding to Heb. iv: 10]. But as 
to choosing this day rather than that for God’s pub¬ 
lic service, that Christ left to the liberty of the 
Church, to do therein what should seem most expe¬ 
dient. But that the Church did very well in prefer¬ 
ring the memory of the Resurrection, before the 
memory of the Creation.” 

Zwingle (1484-1531), the great Swiss leader of the 
Reformation, who, unfortunately for himself and his 
cause, vainly thought to wield both the carnal and 
the spiritual weapon with equal success, wrote thus :* 
“ Now, hear, my Valentines, how the Sabbath is ren¬ 
dered ceremonial. If we would have the Lord’s Day 
so confined to a certain time, that it shall be thought 
wicked to transfer it to another time, in which, by 
resting as well as before, we may hear the Word of 
God, if necessity shall haply so require, this day, 
so scrupulously limited to a certain day, would im¬ 
pose upon us a ceremony. For we are in no way 
bound to time, but time ought so to serve us, as to 
make it lawful, and permitted to each church, when 
necessity urges—as is usual to be done, especially 
in harvest time—to transfer the solemnity and rest 
of the Lord’s Day or Sabbath to some other day; or, 


* Hessey, Notes, p. 444 (nearly). 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


125 


on the Lord’s Day itself, after finishing of the holy 
things, to follow their labors, though not without 
great necessity.” The last words seem to indicate 
some very proper and involuntary misgivings of con¬ 
science, as if something had been overlooked which 
further and more unbiased reflection, or more light, 
would bring to mind. 

John Calvin, perhaps the greatest intellect of the 
Reformation, speaks as follows, on the Fourth Com¬ 
mandment, in his celebrated “ Institutes of the 
Christian Religion”:* “The end of this precept is, 
that, being dead to our own affections and works, we 
should meditate on the kingdom of God ... It 
was the design of the heavenly Lawgiver, under the 
rest of the seventh day, to give the people of Israel 
a figure of the spiritual rest, by which the faithful 
ought to refrain from their own works, in order to 
leave God to work within them [Calvin thus evi¬ 
dently explains Heb. iv : 10, by the first clause of v. 3, 
and not, as Macknight and others do, as meaning 
that ceasing from our own works, which only comes 
at death]. Secondly, that there should be a stated 
day . . . and thirdly, that servants . . . 

should be indulged with a day of rest . . . from 

their labor.” “The spiritual rest was the principal 
design of the Sabbath.” “We must rest altogether, 
that God may operate within us.” Quoting Rom. 
vi:4, and Col. ii : 16, 17, he says, “He [Christ], I 


*“ Institutes,” Bk. II, Ch. VIII. Phila. Presb. Bd. of Pub. 




126 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


say, is the true fulfillment of the Sabbath . . . 

not in one day, but in the whole course of our life 
. . . though the Sabbath is abrogated, yet it is 

still customary among us to assemble on stated days 
for hearing the Word, etc., and also to allow servants 
and laborers a remission from their labor . . . 

Who can deny that both these things are as proper 
for us as for the Jews? . . . Unless there be 

stated days appointed for them, how can they be 
held [quoting i Cor. xiv : 40] ? ” Proceeding to 
speak of “unquiet spirits” who complained that any 
observance of particular days savored of Judaism, he 
says, among other things, “ The Lord’s Day is not 
observed by us on the principles of Judaism . . . 

for we celebrate it, not with scrupulous rigor, as a 
ceremony which we conceive to be a figure of some 
spiritual mystery, but only use it as a remedy neces¬ 
sary to the preservation of order in the Church. 

. . . However, the ancients have, not without 
sufficient reason, substituted what we call the Lord’s 
Day, in the room of the Sabbath. For . . the 

same day which put an end to the shadows, ad¬ 
monishes Christians not to adhere to a shadowy 
ceremony. Yet I do not lay so much stress on the 
septenary number, that I would oblige the Church to 
an invariable adherence to it.” He calls those false 
prophets who say that only “ the ceremonial part of 
this commandment, which they say, is the appoint¬ 
ment of the seventh day, has been abrogated, but that 
the moral part of it, that is, the observance of one 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


127 


day in seven, still remains,” and adds that “ those 
who adhere to it, far exceed the Jews in a gross, 
carnal, and superstitious observance . of the Sab¬ 
bath,” meriting the reproofs of Isaiah. Yet, “lest 
religion decay or languish among us, sacred assem¬ 
blies ought diligently to be held, and we ought to use 
those external means which are adapted to support 
the worship of God.” 

In reading the pages of Calvin, from which these 
extracts are made, with the care necessary to afford 
a fair representation of them, one can not but say, 
here is something of vacillation, something of grop¬ 
ing for a sure foundation, between a return to the 
false foundation and false practice of Rome, and an 
excess of reaction from it. 

The more witnesses we call, whether individuals, 
or standard confessions of faith, whether as testify¬ 
ing to the facts of their own times, or as contributors 
to the history of opinion ; the more we are tempted 
to think that on a question like the present, the 
safety which is declared to result from having a mul¬ 
titude of counsellors, consists in escaping from them 
all, and in clinging to Scripture and catholic consent, 
or universal and permanent Christian usage. For 
Melancthon, who died in 1560, and Bullinger, who 
died in 1575, were so nearly contemporaries, one 
German, the other Swiss, and both eminent, in what 
was essentially one and the same Continental Reforma¬ 
tion, that we might naturally expect them to agree. 
Yet they belong to quite different parties. Melanc- 



128 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


thon not having altogether recovered his balance, as 
it would seem, from the reaction from papal ecclesi¬ 
astical Judaism, represents the party to whom all 
days are alike, and to whom there is no Christian 
Sabbath having divine authority. Bullinger, on the 
contrary, might pass for a moderate Scotch Sabbata¬ 
rian. 

Says Melancthon,* in the Augsberg Confession 
(1530), the creed of the German Reformers : “What 
then is to be thought of the Lord’s Day, and the 
like formalities of public worship ? To this it is re¬ 
plied, that bishops or ministers have liberty to ap¬ 
point forms of proceeding, that every thing may go 
on regularly in the Church ; not that by means of 
them we may merit the remission of our sins, or give 
satisfaction therefor, or that our consciences may be 
bound to regard them as necessary acts of worship, 
and the neglect of them as sinful, when others are 
not thereby made to stumble. . . Of this nature 

is the observation of the Lord’s Day, of Easter, Whit¬ 
suntide, and the like holidays and ceremonies. For 
those who think that the observance of the Lord’s 
Day has been appointed instead of the Sabbath [the 
Jewish seventh day], by the Church, as a thing neces¬ 
sary, greatly err. The Scripture allows that we are 
not bound to keep the Sabbath ; for it teaches that the 
ceremonies of the Law of Moses are not necessary 
after the revelation of the Gospel. And yet, because 


* Cox, Lit. Sab. Question, vol. i, p. 130. 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


129 


it was requisite to appoint a certain day, that the 
people might know when to assemble together, it ap¬ 
pears that the Church appointed for this purpose the 
Lord’s Day, which seemed to have pleased the more 
for the reason that men might have an example of 
Christian liberty, and might know that the observ¬ 
ance, neither of the Sabbath, nor of any other day, is 
necessary.” 

Bullinger, on the contrary, says the Sabbath “ was 
given, first of all, to the patriarchs, and afterward 
renewed at Sinai.” The Scripture, he says, mentions 
two kinds of Sabbath : 1. The spiritual, or rest from 

sin [see below the quotations from Barclay, the Qua¬ 
ker]. 2. The Sabbath which is the outward insti¬ 
tution of religion. Both of these Christians should 
keep. . . They of the Primitive Church did 

change the Sabbath day, lest they should have seem¬ 
ed to have imitated the Jews; . . . and made 

their assemblies and holy restings to be on the first 
day of sabbaths, which John calleth Sunday, or the 
Lord’s Day. . . . And although we do not in any 

of the apostle’s writings find any mention that this 
Sunday was commanded us to be kept holy; yet, be¬ 
cause in the fourth precept of the first table we are 
commanded to have a care of religion and outward 
godliness, it would be against all godliness and 
Christian charity, if we should deny to sanctify the 
Sunday; especially, since the outward worship of 
God can not consist without an appointed space and 
time of holy rest.” Here follows a very just and 



130 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


attractive discrimination. “I suppose also that we 
ought to think the same of those few feasts and holy 
days which we keep holy to Christ our Lord, in 
memory of his nativity, etc. . . . But, because 

the Lord will have holy days to be solemnized and kept 
to himself alone, I do not like festival days in honor 
of any.creatures.” This is interesting as establishing 
a principle by which to discriminate between Christ¬ 
mas, etc., and the mass of later “saints’ days.” Bul- 
linger would allow none but works of necessity and 
mercy on the Lord’s Day, including harvesting in 
harvest time of frequent bad weather. Vicious re¬ 
creations are condemned, but holy and modest ones 
allowed. He teaches also, in opposition to the decla¬ 
ration that “ the weapons of our warfare are not car¬ 
nal,” “ that it is the duty of a Christian magistrate, 
or at least of a good householder, to compel to 
amendment the breakers and contemners of God’s 
Sabbath and worship.” And this he does, not in be¬ 
half of social order and rights, but on the authority 
of the Levitical law (Num. xv); and to the extent 
even of confiscation, “bodily imprisonment,” or 
“death.” 

Herein he plainly violates the gentle spirit of the 
Gospel, and substitutes you shall by my will, for 
you ought , in obedience to God's will—a common 
error of those, who, under pretence of a zeal for the 
Lord, as vehement as Jehu’s, only betray an uncon¬ 
trollable desire to have their own way about other 
people’s affairs, and thus do the great mischief of 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


131 


preparing the way for a reaction to general lawless¬ 
ness. 

We must for completeness here, and for future 
reference, add a word from the testimony of two 
other leading representative reformers. 

Thomas Cranmer,* Archbishop of Canterbury, a 
leading English Reformer, and martyred in 1555, 
says : “There be two parts of the Sabbath-day: one 
is the outward bodily rest from all manner of labor 
and work, this is mere ceremonial, and was taken 
away with other sacrifices and ceremonies by Christ, 
at the preaching of the Gospel”; and he supports 
himself by citations from St. Augustine and Jerome. 
“The other part of the Sabbath-day is the inward 
rest, or ceasing from sin, from our own wills and 
lusts, and to do only God’s will and commandments. 

And this spiritual Sabbath may no man alter 
or change ; no, not the whole Church.” To this we 
subjoin a word from Bishop John Hooper, a fellow 
reformer, and martyr in 1554, that, “Although the 
ceremony of the Sabbath be taken away (Coll, ii), 
which appertained only to the . . . Hebrews, yet, 

. . . this Sunday that we observe is not the com¬ 
mandment of man, . . . but it is by express words 

commanded ... as the words of St. Paul de- 
clareth ” (1 Cor. xvi: 2, compared with Luke xxiv: 1, 
and John xx : 1). 

Our remaining witness is John Knox (1505-1572). 


* Cox, I, 135, 137. 



32 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


The Westminster Confession became the orthodox 
standard in Scotland in 1648. But long before that 
another was in existence, the confession drawn up by 
Knox in 1560. And on the first table of the Deca¬ 
logue, this simply says : “ We confess and acknowl¬ 

edge that God has given to man his holy law, in 
which are not only forbidden all such works as dis¬ 
please and offend his Godly Majesty, but also are 
commanded all such as please him, and as he hath 
promised to reward. And these works be of two 
sorts; the one are done to honor of God, the other 
to the profit of our neighbors, and both have the re¬ 
vealed Word of God for their assurance. To have 
one God, to worship and honor him, to call upon 
him in all our troubles, to reverence his holy name, 
to hear his Word , to believe the same, to com¬ 
municate with his holy sacraments , are the ivorks of 
the first table.” As that portion of the “word,” and 
those “sacraments” which most intimately concern 
Christians, were not in existence when the Decalogue 
was given, the sense of the preceding words in italics 
must be: the works under Christianity which are 
suggested by, are corresponding to, or analogous with 
those of the first table. Add that in his “Book of Dis¬ 
cipline,” and elsewhere, Knox almost invariably used 
the title “Sunday,” instead of “Sabbath;” that he 
was the intimate friend of Calvin, whose very easy 
views of Sunday observance we have already seen ; 
and finally, that, in practice, Knox celebrated the 
most festive weddings on Sunday, and travelled, 




IN MODERN TIMES. 


133 


wrote letters, and entertained company on that day.* 
So that he was in no sense the author of what is 
popularly known as the Scotch Presbyterian Sabbath, 
which was an importation from England many years 
later. 

Summing up, at this point, the opinions thus far 
quoted, it is perfectly evident that, in the first stage 
of the Reformation, Germany, France, Switzerland, 
England, and Scotland were in full accord, in a far 
more easy-going view of the Lord’s Day, and its re¬ 
lation to the Sabbath, than was, about a century later, 
invented (or discovered, if the reader prefers the 
word) in England, and adopted mostly in Scotland 
and early New England. 

Let it be also noted, that these authorities, individ¬ 
ual and collective, are not quoted altogether with ap¬ 
proval, but principally for the purpose of showing the 
particular extent and direction of the reaction of the 
early reformers from the previous perversion and 
entanglement of the Lord’s Day. Rather, we would 
agree with Baxter, who says on this subject (as 
quoted by Dr. Hessey in a note), “The Devil hath 
here been a great Undoer by overdoing. When he 
knew not how else to cast out the holy observation 
of the Lord’s Day with zealous people, he found out 
the trick of devising so many days called holy days, 
to set up by it, that the people might perceive that 
the observation of them all as holy was never to be 

* Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., I, 486. 



134 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


expected. And so the Lord’s Day was jumbled in 
the heap of holy days, and all turned into ceremony 
by the Papists, and too many other churches in the 
world, which became Calvin’s temptation (as his own 
words make plain) to think too meanly of the Lord’s 
Day with the rest.” 

Wishing to select only the most truly representa¬ 
tive witnesses on all sides of the question under dis¬ 
cussion, where there are many hundreds to choose 
from, we next quote again from Richard Baxter, 
(1615-1691), one of the most eminent English Non¬ 
conformists. Midway between the extreme Puri¬ 
tans and the established Church, as then partly 
misdirected, he was a man “ whose praise is through¬ 
out all the Churches,” for his mingled sweetness, 
thoughtfulness, and constancy of spirit. He was 
accounted as a saint by the Puritans, with whom, 
however, he did not side in all things, either ^re¬ 
ligious or political; while also an English bishop 
(Wilson) could say of him, that if he had lived in 
primitive times he would have been one of the 
Fathers of the Church. 

A portion of his “Practical Works,” in twenty- 
three volumes, is a treatise of 153 pages, entitled, 
“The Divine appointment of the Lord’s Day proved, 
as a separated day for holy worship, especially in the 
Church assemblies; and consequently the cessation 
of the seventh-day Sabbath.” This work has ever 
since been held to be, except by extremists, one of 
the best defenses of the Christian Lord’s Day, on its 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


135 


own proper grounds, and as a divine institution, as 
against, essentially, a perpetuated Jewish Sabbath on 
the one side, and a day having only ecclesiastical au¬ 
thority on the other. 

The mingled wisdom and kindly considerate¬ 
ness of this author are manifested in statements like 
those in his preface (a little condensed as here 
quoted): “I knew that there was enough written on 
this subject long ago ; but, 1. Much of it is in Latin. 
2. Some writings which prove the abrogation of the 
Jewish Sabbath, do with that treat so loosely of the 
Lord’s Day, that they require a confutation in the lat¬ 
ter, as well as a commendation in the former. 3. Some 
are too large for general reading. 4. Most . . . 

build so much more than I can do ... on the Old 
Testament, . . . that I fear this is the chief oc¬ 

casion of many people’s errors, who, when they find 
. . . nothing plain and convincing that is pleaded 

with them, do therefore think it safest to stick to the 
old Jewish Sabbath. The friends and acquaintances 
of some of these persons importuning me to take the 
plainest and nearest way to satisfy such honest 
doubters, I have here done it, . . . thinking myself 
that this is very clear and satisfactory; viz: to prove 
— 1. That Christ did commission his apostles to 
teach all things which he commanded, and to settle 
orders in his Church [Acts i: 2, 3]. 2. And that he 
gave them his Spirit to enable them to do all this in¬ 
fallibly, by bringing all his words to their remem¬ 
brance, and by leading them into all truth [John xiv: 



136 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


26, xvi: 13]. 3. And that his apostles by this Spirit 
did in fact separate this day for holy worship, especial 
ly in church assemblies, and declared the cessation of 
the Jewish Sabbaths [Col. ii: 16, 17].” 4 [Which 

seems to us the whole pith and marrow, and the one 
impregnable point of the purely Christian argument]. 
“And that as this change had the very same author as 
the holy Scriptures (the Holy Ghost in the apostles), 
so that fact hath the same kind of proof that we have 
of the canon, and the integrity and uncorruptness of 
the particular Scripture books and texts; and that, if 
so much Scripture as mentioneth the keeping of the 
Lord’s Day, expounded by the consent and practice 
of the universal Church from the days of the apostles 
(all keeping this day as holy, without the dissent of 
any one sect, or single person, that I remember to 
have read of), I say, if history will not prove the 
point of fact, that this day was kept in the apostles’ 
times, and consequently by their appointment, then 
the same proof will not serve to evince that any text 
of Scripture is canonical and uncorrupted; nor can 
we think that any thing in the world, that is past, can 
have historical proof.” 

Of Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), a kindred spirit, 
and nearly contemporary with Baxter, it is enough to 
add that they closely agreed on the question of the 
Lord’s Day as a new institution, peculiar to Chris¬ 
tianity, and not deriving its authority from the Fourth 
Commandment; the entire Jewish law, including the 
Decalogue, being replaced by Christianity, as a 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


137 


means, among other things, we may say, of reviving 
and keeping alive in the conscience the original law 
of Nature, and, in addition, more which we could not 
know from that. 

In dismissing this pair of distinguished worthies, 
we wish to add minor points of interest concerning 
Baxter, appropriately illustrative of his quiet con¬ 
stancy, or wisdom, or liveliness of mind, and hence 
of his value as a witness. 

First. We see from the period of his long life, that 
he lived through the troubled and violently changeful 
times of Charles I and Laud, of Cromwell and Puritan 
supremacy (1640-1660), of the restoration of the 
dissolute Charles II, and of the “glorious revolu¬ 
tion of 1688.” Yet he was not a partisan or a 
changeling. 

Sccojid. As to other holy days than the Lord’s Day, 
he makes these sensible observations: “The great 
blessing of an apostolic ministry, and of the stability 
of the martyrs in their sufferings for Christ, being so 
rare and notable a mercy to the Church, I confess^ 
I know no reason why the churches of all succeeding 
ages may not keep an anniversary day of thanks-giving 
to God for Peter, or Paul, or Stephen, as well as for 
deliverance from the gunpowder-plot. . . . An 

honor is due to apostles and martyrs in their places, 
in meet subordination to God.” That is, if only New 
Testament saints are commemorated, and that but 
once a year; and for the sake of their enduring work 
for Christ, it is he that is honored by the observance, 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


138 . 


and it is just the Christian opposite of that proud 
earthly hero-worship, which the world is too fond of. 

Third. On the holy trifle, When does Sunday be¬ 
gin? he wittily observes: “If we can tell when 
any day beginneth, we may know when the Lord’s 
Day beginneth. If we can not, the necessity of our 
ignorance will shorten the trouble of our scruples by 
excusing us.” 

Moderate men, Puritans and Churchmen alike, ad¬ 
mirably harmonized on the subject of the Lord’s Day, 
as we shall now show by a few more typical quota¬ 
tions from men of abundant learning and piety, as 
well as of quiet minds, in the English Church estab¬ 
lishment, as well as out of it. As one indication of 
the harmony just alluded to, we have seen how kind¬ 
ly Baxter was spoken of by Bishop Wilson. The former 
could return the kindness thus : “But though Satan 
may somewhat disturb our concord, and tempt some 
men’s charity to remissness, by these differences, he 
shall never keep them out of heaven, who worship 
God through Christ, by the Spirit, even in spirit and 
truth. Nor shall he, I hope, ever draw me to think 
such holy persons as herein differ with me, to be 
worse than myself, though I think them in this to be 
unhappily mistaken, much less to approve of their 
own separation from others, or of other men’s con¬ 
demning them as heretics, and inflicting severities 
upon them for these their opinions’ sake.” 

Leaving these, our moderate non-conformist wit¬ 
nesses, Baxter and Doddridge, for Churchmen of 



IN MODERN TIMES . 


139 


like spirit, we quote first from the celebrated Bishop 
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). He has been described 
as filled “with guileless ardor, peerless eloquence, and 
the richest stores of varied knowledge.” He says: 
“God’s rest is to be understood to be a beholding and 
a rejoicing in his work finished ; and therefore we 
truly represent God’s rest when we confess and re¬ 
joice in God’s works and GocFs glory. 

“This the Christian Church does . . . espe¬ 

cially upon the Lord’s Day, . . . being determined 
to this day by the Resurrection of her dearest Lord, 
. . . and we are to abstain from bodily labor, not 

because it was a direct duty to us as it was to the 
Jews, but because it is necessary in order to do our 
duty that we attend to the offices of religion. . . . 

And though we have more natural and proper reason 
to keep the Lord’s Day than the Sabbath, yet the 
Jews had a Divine commandment for their day, which 
we have not for ours; but we have many command¬ 
ments to do that honor to God, which was intended 
in the Fourth Commandment; and the apostles ap¬ 
pointed the first day of the week for doing it in 
solemn assemblies.” 

We next quote from Richard Hooker* (1554-1600), 
generally known for his learning and impartiality as 
“the judicious Hooker.” In his great work, Of the 
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity , he says : “ Even Nature 
hath taught the heathens, and God the Jews, and 


* Cox, Lit, Sab. Quest., 1:141. 



140 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


Christ us, first, that festival solemnities are a part of 
the public exercise of religion ; secondly, that praise, 
liberality, and rest are as natural elements whereof 
solemnities consist. But these things the heathens 
converted to the honor of their false gods; . . . 

whereupon, when the Israelites impiously followed 
so corrupt example, they are in every degree noted to 
have done amiss; their hymns or songs of praise were 
idolatry; their bounty, excess; and their rest, wan¬ 
tonness. Therefore, the law of God, which appointed 
them days of solemnity, taught them likewise in what 
manner the same should be celebrated. . . . But 

forasmuch as their law by the coming of Christ is 
changed, and we thereunto no way bound, St. Paul 
. . . doth bend his forces against that opinion 

which imposed on the Gentiles the yoke of Jewish le¬ 
gal observations, as if the whole world ought forever, 
. . . to keep and observe the same. Such'as in 

this persuasion hallowed those Jewish Sabbaths, the 
apostle sharply reproveth, saying, ‘Ye observe days, 
and months, and times, and years; I am in fear of you, 
lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain’ (Gal. iv: 
io). . . . And concerning particulars, their Sab¬ 

bath the Church hath changed into our Lord’s Day; 
that, as the one did continually bring to mind the 
former world finished by creation, so the other might 
keep us in perpetual remembrance of a far better 
world, begun by him which came to restore all things, 
to make both heaven and earth new.” 

As one more, and a most distinguished representa- 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


141 


tive of moderate men, in times when partisanship 
was particularly easy, we will quote Archdeacon Pa- 
ley * (1743-1805). He was one of those temperate 
writers, whose quiet and sensible opinions gained for 
his celebrated work on Moral and Political Philos¬ 
ophy the honor of fifteen editions during the author’s 
lifetime, besides many more since. 

As one indication of his large-minded views, it may 
be mentioned that Cox, in his crowded volumes on 
the Literature of the Sabbath Question , finds twenty 
pages for him.i Here is another and a stronger in¬ 
dication : “The ability and clearness with which Dr. 
Paley lays down his doctrine of the Sabbath, have on 
all sides been cordially admitted; and hardly less 
unanimous has been the assent of thoughtful men to 
the soundness of his exposition of the use of sabbatical 
institutions. But his interpretation of the Scripture 
account of them has been assailed on various and op¬ 
posite grounds by adversaries innumerable.” 

It is naturally to be assumed that views honored 
with such attacks are singularly impartial, dispassion¬ 
ate, and balanced. Let us therefore show, though 
with the utmost brevity, what they were. 

“Chap. vii. Of the Scripture account of Sabbati¬ 
cal Institutions. 

“The subject, so far as it makes any part of Chris¬ 
tian Morality, is contained in two questions : 


* Bampton-Lectures, i860, pp. 144, 280. 
f Vol. ii, pp. 248-268. 



142 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


“I. Whether the command by which the Jewish 
Sabbath was instituted extends to Christians ? 

“ II. Whether any new command was delivered by 
Christ; or any other day substituted in the place of 
the Jewish Sabbath by the authority or example of 
his apostles ? 

“On the first of these questions the conclusion is 
that the Sabbath was first instituted , not at the Crea¬ 
tion, since there is no account of its observance, nor 
fault found for its non-observance, before Moses, but 
(Ex. xvi), just before the giving of the law, and as a 
peculiar sign between God and the Jewish nation, and 
hence binding only upon the Jews.” (Here we may 
note a distinction between the first institution , shortly 
before the giving of the law, and the divine reason 
for the institution, which reason began at the Crea¬ 
tion, but seems not to have been made known until 
the delivery of the law.) To continue from Paley: 
“The observance of the Sabbath was not one of the 
articles enjoined by the apostles (Acts xv) upon 
them which from among the Gentiles are turned un¬ 
to God.” 

He further explains Col. ii: 16, 17, as abolishing 
the Jewish Sabbath, which he says must be received, 
if at all, “as to the day, the duties, and the penalty.” 

On the second question, he builds on the six texts 
commonly adduced. Commenting on St. John xx: 
26, he says: “We read that ‘after eight days,’ that is, 
on the first day of the week following, ‘again the dis¬ 
ciples were within,’ which second meeting upon the 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


143 


same day of the week looks like an appointment and 
design to meet on that particular day.” Sir Wil¬ 
liam Domville, with perhaps more of acuteness than 
breadth, catches at the words, “looks like,” and says: 
“No one, however, can maintain that what only 
‘looks like’ proof is proof itself.” Paley, to be sure, 
might have been less open to this criticism, if 
he had said : looks like the beginning of what was 
before long to be a universal and permanent custom. 
For then in the light of such custom, his “looks Tike ” 
would have appeared more plainly as an easy-natured 
expression of really was the beginning, etc. That 
such actually was the mind of Paley, seems evident 
from the words of his next comment, that on Acts xx : 
6, 7. 

For on that he says : “We find the same custom 
in a Christian church at a great distance from Jeru¬ 
salem,” and adds that the verse shows, “ I think, that 
the practice by this time was familiar and established.” 
Now Domville assumes that “think” here signifies 
doubt, but it does not necessarily imply more than the 
absence of offensive positiveness ; and again, the em¬ 
phasis might be on “ I,” meaning that I, as a wit¬ 
ness, testify to my belief on the subject. Paley’s 
final conclusion justifies the belief that he merely 
modestly expressed what he, in his own mind, had no 
doubt about, for he finally says: “The conclusion 
from the whole inquiry ... is this: The as¬ 
sembling upon the first day of the week for the pur¬ 
pose of public worship and religious instruction, is a 



144 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


law of Christianity, of Divine appointment; the rest¬ 
ing on that day from our employments, longer than 
we are detained from them by attendance upon these 
assemblies, is, to Christians, an ordinance of human 
institution.” Here, .while his expression is guarded 
about each separate indication, yet when, to his calm 
mind, all the several indications plainly point one 
way, he shows no hesitancy in expressing himself at 
the conclusion unequivocally. But we are bound to 
add, that, as a loyal Christian, when he comes to ex¬ 
pand his doctrine of Lord’s Day “resting,” he rules 
out so many things, both of labor and pleasure, as 
improper interferences with due attention to the pro¬ 
per duties of the day, as to leave as orderly and de¬ 
vout a Lord’s Day observance as any one could wish, 
who is not wedded to a Pharisaic, or a rigorously in¬ 
terpreted Levitical Sabbath. Turning from this class 
of quiet-minded witnesses about the Lord’s Day, and 
which is further represented by Isaac Watts (1674- 
1748) and others, and in our own day by Dr. J. A. 
Hessey and others, we next add a few examples from 
two opposite classes of extremists, each of whom 
doubtless intensifies the other. 

First. We can not perhaps give a clearer idea of 
what is called the purely ecclesiastical view , than to 
present the summary account of it substantially as 
given by Dr. Hessey, thus : * 

“The Sabbath was not enjoined on man at the 


Bampton Lects., i860, p. 10. 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


145 


Creation. The Fourth Commandment is not a moral 
precept (or contains only the slight moral element of 
intimating that God is to be worshipped at some time), 
therefore as it is not one of those for which the Gen¬ 
tiles [either in Canaan, though.they were blamed for 
much else, or Gentile converts mentioned in Acts] 
were blamed for neglecting, so it is not binding upon 
Christians generally as a law of God. Nay, the very 
Decalogue itself is not binding upon any Christian 
man as having been delivered on Sinai, but, in so far 
as it is binding, as a portion of the law of Nature [and, 
we must add, as repeated, in substance, in equivalent 
precepts of Christianity]. 

“The Sabbath was a sign between God and the Jews, 
and expired with the Jewish dispensation. As for 
the Lord’s Day, it is not in any sense of the word a 
Sabbath, or a successor to the Sabbath. It is a 
purely ecclesiastical institution. It has little if any 
thing to do with the Fourth Commandment. It has 
an origin, a reason, an obligation of its own. The 
passages usually cited from the New Testament do 
not imply that it existed as an institution in the life¬ 
times of, at any rate, the great majority of the apostles. 
It was not dreamed of till the end of the first, per¬ 
haps till the middle of the second, century. It is 
scarcely hinted at in Scripture, unless indeed we hold 
that St. John refers to it in Rev. i: 10, which may be 
seriously questioned. 

“ We do not believe that it is sinful to do upon it 
what it may have been sinful for the Jews to do upon 



146 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


the Sabbath, or that it is incumbent upon us, even if 
it were possible, to spend the whole of it in strictly 
religious exercises or religious contemplation. Man 
is body as well as soul, and he has social tendencies 
as well as personal responsibilities. Sunday should 
give free play to his whole nature. Thus far, as to 
our idea of this festival, which we consider to be a 
Positive ordinance of the Church , not one dependent 
on the Old Testament, or even on the New. [The 
italicized words mark this as the purely ecclesiastical 
theory.] If you ask us, ‘Why, then, has the Fourth 
Commandment been placed in the Liturgy in its 
purely Jewish form, and in what sense can you-pray 
that you may keep it?’ a reply is ready: We pray 
that we may keep that law so far as it contains the 
law of Nature, and has been entertained in the Chris¬ 
tian Church ; as also that God may have mercy upon 
us for the neglect thereof in those holy days which, 
by the wisdom of the Church, have been set apart for 
God’s public service [to which those of the evangeli¬ 
cal theory— if we may give it that name — may add, 
that we pray that we may keep this law as a pledge 
that if the Jews had their holy day, we, as Christians, 
should have a better — not of man’s device, but inau¬ 
gurated at and by means of the Resurrection, and 
made to be universally understood to be so by the op¬ 
eration of the Spirit, guiding the Apostolic and Prim¬ 
itive Church into all truth of opinion and practice].” 

Dr. Hessey continues of this view : “ Its leading 

expositors are Dr. Heylin and Bishop F. White,” with 




IN MODERN TIMES. 


147 


whom he adds that Bishop Sanderson and Archbishop 
Whately and many others agree more or less com¬ 
pletely. Heylin’s work was a quarto of 462 pages, 
in two parts — I. The Sabbath ; II. The Lord’s Day 
— and was entitled The History of the Sabbath. He 
is spoken of by decided opponents as a man of ability, 
honesty, and learning, and his preponderating'Church 
views may be partly explained by the date at which he 
lived (1600-1662), including the two oppositely vio¬ 
lent periods of Charles I and Laud, and of Cromwell 
and the Puritans. If he sought to please the former, 
he would naturally write as he did, and would not 
care to please the latter or adopt their views. 

It seems to be a settled principle of human nature 
that extremes mutually intensify each other; that, as 
stated in Chapter I, action begets equal and opposite 
reaction in morals and religion as well as in me¬ 
chanics. The few following extracts are exceedingly 
interesting as illustrating this principle, as well as in 
affording glimpses at some of the vicissitudes of the 
Lord’s Day. But the main point of all is that, what¬ 
ever these vicissitudes or their cause, the keeping of 
the day has never been interrupted, or lost, or injured 
beyond recovery. In a word, as shown in Chapter I, 
different theories of a fact make no difference in the 
existence of the fact, and but little in its character and 
condition. That we still possess the treasure of the 
Lord’s Day as we do, is, we think and repeat, in view 
of what it has survived, a distinct indication of its orb 
gin, its character, and its consequent permanent claims. 



148 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


We come now to the modern Sabbatarian viezv , in 
itself not without some manifestations at times of the 
fanaticism which is one of the weaknesses of human 
nature, and which was characteristic in one form and 
degree or another, and at one time or another, chiefly 
of Scotland and New England, in contrast with pre¬ 
vailing English and Continental Protestantism gen¬ 
erally, widely as these, however, differ from each 
other, as shown already. 

We will consider it, though with enforced brevity, 
as to its origin, causes, and manifestations. 

As to .first, its origin, and, first, negatively, it was 
not with any of the great reformers, Luther of Ger¬ 
many, Calvin of France, Zwingle of Switzerland, Cran- 
mer of England, and Knox of Scotland, as we have 
already sufficiently shown in the present chapter. 
But where was it ? It was Dr. Nicholas Bownd (or 

Bound), a clergyman of the Church of England (- 

-1607), who first broadly asserted the doctrine which 
has since been recognized as the one of Puritan dis¬ 
covery (or invention, according as it is accepted or 
rejected). We can not speak of this book, however, 
especially in view of the circumstances under which 
it was written, otherwise than with respect. Its au¬ 
thor was not a violent partisan or fanatic, but a man 
of ability and piety, who saw and felt the need of 
doing something, and who did the best he could, if 
not the best that could be done. Now as to the 
cause of this movement. 

The observance of the Lord’s Day, through the 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


149 


nearly half century of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), 
was far enough from what it should have been. Sun¬ 
day labor was all but commanded after church hours, 
for fear of superstitiously Judaizing, and games, 
dances, and theatricals were countenanced on that 
holy day. The reaction from this abuse was neces¬ 
sarily strong. Powerful and positive prohibition of 
all this was desired, and must be sought in Scripture. 
Love was not so influential as will among parties, 
generally, in those days, and so perhaps the New 
Testament seemed lacking in force. The Fourth 
Commandment, especially when interpreted not as an 
original promulgation, but as the reinstatement of 
what had been obligatory from the Creation, and only 
obscured in Egypt, seemed to furnish both model and 
authority, and hence arose* the Puritan Sabbatarian 
theory, first systematised and published by Bownd in 
1595 - 

Or again, and as a reaction from Roman ecclesias- 
ticism, rather than from prevailing looseness of prac¬ 
tice, the Puritan Sabbatarian reaction is described by 
another as follows :* “The Puritans were clamorous 
opponents of the holidays of the Papal and Anglican 
Churches; but at the same time they admitted and 
contended for the obligation to observe the Sabbath 
by virtue of the Fourth Commandment.” When 
Romanists replied to their denial of the authority of 
tradition by asking : “ What other authority have 

* Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., II: 185. 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


150 


you for keeping the first rather than the seventh 
day?” they met the difficulty and sustained the 
maxim, “The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,” 
by grounding the Lord’s Day on the Fourth Com¬ 
mandment as binding on the whole world always, and 
to be interpreted as commanding “ one day in seven ” 
for rest. 

The principal features of Dr. Bownd’s theory are 
as follows, substantially as quoted by Dr. Hessey 
from Fuller: — 

1. That the commandment to sanctify, not the 
seventh day, but one day in seven, is the essence of 
the Fourth Commandment, and is moral and per¬ 
petual. 

2. That while every thing else that was Jewish — 
priesthood, sacrifices, and sacraments — was abol¬ 
ished, this, transferred to the first day of She week, 
remained. 

3. That Christians should rest as strictly on this 
day as the Jews did on the seventh day, and both 
equally on the authority of the Fourth Command¬ 
ment. 

4. “ The rest upon this day must be a notable and 
singular rest —a most careful, exact, and precise rest, 
after another manner than men are accustomed.” 

After so much of principles follow numerous rules 
—all well meant, and whose consequences were prob¬ 
ably unforeseen, but which, as seeds, subsequently 
led, in Scotland and in New England, to fanaticism 
of opinions and refinements of practice hardly ex- 



IN MODERN TIMES . 


I SI 


ceeded by those of the Pharisees, but to no corre¬ 
sponding degree of genuine and practical godliness, as 
we will next show. See, then, some of the manifesta¬ 
tions of this Sabbatarianism : 

i. Though Jesus and his disciples, and the Phari¬ 
sees also, walked in the fields on the Jewish Sabbath 
day (Luke vi : i, 2), and though (Luke xiv : 1-12) 
Jesus accepted the festive hospitality of a Pharisee on 
that day, an act of the Scotch Presbyterian General 
Assembly, in 1705, declared that walking on the 
Lord’s Day was an act of “ heaven-daring profana¬ 
tion ” ; and a pastoral letter of 1834 declared the same 
to be “an impious encroachment on the inalienable 
prerogative of the Lord God.” Again:* “In the 
year 1644 the ‘Six Sessions’ ordained public intima¬ 
tion to be made that ‘no person, man or woman, shall 
be found vaging, walking, and going upon the streets 
upon the Lord’s Day after the afternoon’s sermon, 
keeping idle, and entertaining impertinent confer¬ 
ences.’ ” “In the next year the same court ordered 
that ‘ the magistrates, attended by the ministers by 
course, shall go up and down the streets after the 
afternoon sermon, and cause take particular notice 
of such as shall be found forth of their houses vaging 
abroad upon the streets, and cause cite them before 
the Session to be rebuked and censured.’ ” “And in 
the records of the Presbytery of Strath-bogie, June 
6, 1658, is this entry: ‘The said day, Alexander 


* Hessey, Bampton Lectures, i860, p. 290. 



152 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION, 


Cairnie, in Tilliochie, was delaitit for brak of Sab¬ 
bath, in bearing ane sheep upon his back from the 
pasture to his own house. The said Alexander com- 
peirit and declarit that it was of necessitie for saving 
of the beast’s lyfe in tyme of storme. Was rebukit 
for the same, and admonished not to do the lyke.’ ” 

Yet, as lovers of Scotland, we read with sorrow, 
alike in the historical novel and the encyclopedia and 
elsewhere, that drunkenness and unchastity have long 
been.crying evils there. 

Three acts of the Scottish parliament were passed 
on the 7th of August, 1645, anc ^ on the 1st and 13th 
of February, 1649, against drunkenness, impiety, 
fornication, and all other vices therein described as 
abounding in the land.* 

2. In Scotland, so early as 1590, the Jewish hours 
for the Sabbath, from sunset to sunset, were enjoined, 
in opposition to Baxter’s caustic wit, already quoted. 
Accordingly, for example, although this practice was 
not uniform, a miller was brought before the Presby¬ 
tery of Lanark in 1666 for Sabbath breaking by 
grinding meal before midnight on Sunday [Saturday ?] 
night.”f 

3. A favorite method with some writers of urging 
an utterly impracticable Sabbath of continuous pub¬ 
lic or private devotion on all persons, was the collec¬ 
tion of examples of appalling judgments following the 

* Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., II : 77. 

f Selections from the Register of the Presbytery of Lanark, 
Ldin., 1839 [Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., I : 254]. 



IN MODERN TIMES . 


153 


disregard of their opinions, and thus reminding one 
of the calling down of fire from heaven upon the 
Samaritan village by the disciples, who were sternly 
rebuked by the Master for their uncharitableness 
(Luke ix : 52-56). 

Thus,* a nobleman, hunting on Sunday, had a child 
with a dog’s head. A writer who wrote against an 
extreme Sabbatarian had a still-born child. Great 
fires, breaking out on Sunday in London and Edin¬ 
burgh, could, in their opinion, have no other cause 
than Sabbath-breaking. It is a sufficient condemna¬ 
tion of these methods that they were an inheritance 
from the Romanism of the dark ages, as illustrated in 
Chapter VI. 

So far Scotland, in which, nevertheless, there is 
much to love and honor. How little good the whole 
spirit and temper of such views and practices might 
do is, however, well illustrated in the story, by Alex¬ 
ander McLeod, d. d.,— and doubtless true to life — 
“The Starling.” A detailed description of the Scotch 
Sunday of less than a hundred years ago may be 
found, given from actual experience, in Smiles’ “Brief 
Biographies,” p. 368. 

5. As in legal trials, so in religious discussion, the 
character of the witnesses is important. On the 
question before us, as on many others, some, on either 
side, are cool, temperate, impartial, candid, as well as 
able, sincere, and pious. Others are too evidently 

* Cox, Lit. Sab. Question, 1 : 149, 187, 192; II: i6r. 



154 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


hot, partisan, bigoted, prejudiced. Of the former, 
though differing from each other in their conclusions, 
are Paley, Hessey, Jeremy Taylor, Whately, Baxter, 
Milton, and many others, including some of the great 
reformers, as we have seen. The existence of dispu¬ 
tants of the latter class is seen in utterances like the 
following.* 

Tract IV of the Scottish Sabbath Alliance says of 
all who hold that the Sabbath of the Old Testament 
was an exclusively Jewish institution, that they 
thereby “clearly prove either their dishonesty or ig¬ 
norance or inability to comprehend a very plain and 
simple subject.” That is, without circumlocution, 
thinkers, such as the above-named, are dishonest, ig¬ 
norant or very stupid! Again : an English Sabba¬ 
tarian says that one who demands clear proof of the 
Divine appointment of the Christian Sabbath — the 
Jewish seventh-day law transferred to the first day — 
“is blinded by a moral cause” to those hints, “pen- 
cillings” and “vestiges” which are the clearest evi¬ 
dence of an ancient institution. And of two Scotch 
Sabbatarian authors, one declares “that it is quite a 
possible thing for a mind that is desirous of evading 
the evidence . . . to succeed in doing so.” The 

other, as if a reporter from the Court of Heaven 
itself, explains that it is “a principle of God’s Word, 
in many cases, to give enough, and no more, to sat¬ 
isfy the devout, not overpower the uncandidS Verily, 


*Cox, Lit. Sab. Question, 11:184. 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


155 


an ardent temperament, Celtic perhaps, is better in 
some aspects than a cold one, but not in such mani¬ 
festations as these. 

6. Now, to turn briefly to New England, for the 
opinions and doings in which authorities are too 
numerous and accessible to need a particular refer¬ 
ence for every statement. Rev. Thomas Shepard of 
Cambridge, Mass, (died 1649), taught in relation to 
civil enforcement of the Fourth Commandment by a 
death penalty that, “although it be doubted whether 
such a law is not too rigorous in these times, yet we 
do see that where the magistrate neglects to restrain 
from this sin, the Lord takes the magistrate’s work 
into his own hand and many times cuts them off sud¬ 
denly who profane his Sabbath presumptuously; and it 
is worth inquiring into whether presumptuous Sab¬ 
bath-breakers are not still to be put to death.” In 
the first draft of the laws of the Massachusetts Col¬ 
ony, Rev. John Cotton made “profaning the Lord’s 
Day in a careless or scornful neglect or contempt 
thereof” a capital crime, along with murder, witch¬ 
craft, arson, blasphemy, etc.,* and early Connecticut 
law was equally severe. But though it be true that 
the foregoing, and a host of similar facts, have been 
manifestations of what is commonly known as Sab¬ 
batarianism, yet it would be unjust, and disingenu¬ 
ously so, to leave it to be supposed that they are the 
only ones. The writer, himself, cheerfully confesses 

* Sabbath Essays, 1879, p. 263; and in general, Cox, Hessey, etc. 



156 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


that the Lord’s Day of his childhood was not a bur¬ 
den. Pleasant Bible-stories, and other reading, the 
singing of hymns by the fireside, and the pictured 
historical (not the drier doctrinal) catechism, mingled 
with suitable home duties to make the day a happy 
one. Some especially delightful testimony is further 
afforded in some family newspaper articles by a well- 
known writer, descriptive of old-time Sabbaths in 
Maine,* and New England biography could doubtless 
furnish more of like character. 

It is, however, by being enabled to say, Look at 
what the Lord’s Day has had to contend against, as 
well as, Behold the blessed good that it has done to 
thousands of longing souls for many ages, that its 
claim to high, and lasting, and cherishing regard is 
more firmly established. 

7. Returning, by way of farewell, to Old England, 
and from practice to opinions, a notable example of 
an extremist is to be found in John Wells, an English 
Non-conformist minister, who published in 1668 The 
Practical Sabbatarian , a quarto of 787 pages, in 55 
chapters, among which are, Chapters 15-22, What 
we must meditate upon on the morning of the Lord’s 
Day; 28, Sleeping in ordinances is a great and daring 
provocation ; 47, A plea with Christians to outvie the 
Jews in Sabbath holiness and observations, etc., em¬ 
bracing three “decades of arguments”; “Some 
necessary cautions,” directions for spending the 

* Reminiscences of my Childhood, in the Congregationalist, 
by J. S. C. Abbott. 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


i5 7 


hours between church services and the evening; 36, 
37, “ Some supplemental directions,” etc. ; 54, “Some 
miscellaneous prescriptions,” etc.; which latter titles 
look very much like what, in the Romish communion, 
may be called ghostly or spiritual direction. 

On the other hand, John Owen, though himself one 
of the most eminent and praiseworthy “Independent” 
ministers, probably had this ponderous treatise of 
Wells’s in mind when, in his own work on the Sab¬ 
bath, published in 1671, he said, “I will not deny but 
that there have been and are mistakes in this matter, 
leaning towards the other extreme” (that is, of over¬ 
burdening people with a multiplication of Sabbath 
duties). Many most humane considerations are found 
in his work relative to the weaker brethren who can 
not tax themselves as others can, and relative to differ¬ 
ing times and circumstances. These, however, gave 
offense to more “stalwart” spirits, among whom, it 
is to be regretted, was found John Eliot, the apostle 
to the Indians, who wrote an expostulatory letter to 
Owen for his laxity. 

But before closing this chapter, one other, and 
mostly a more recent, class of thinkers concerning 
the Lord’s Day must be mentioned, besides the 
ecclesiastical, evangelical, and Judaical, or Sabba¬ 
tarian, pure or mixed; and that is, those who 
insist, principally, on reverence for the law of Na¬ 
ture, as demanding periodical rest and refreshing 
change of pursuit. Such, in one way or another, 
are Cox, Baden Powell, F. W. Robertson, Thomas 



58 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


Arnold, and others. They recognize the fact that 
the gloomy, wearing, unhealthful confinement of some 
during the week, the homelessness of some, and the 
great variety in the condition and pursuits of differ¬ 
ent persons, tend to greatly extend the list of works, 
which, though not to all alike, may truly, to some 
persons, or under some circumstances, be properly 
ranked as works of “necessity and mercy.” If, for 
example, some of the best of one’s Sunday hours be 
those spent in meditation while quietly pacing a re¬ 
tired garden walk, amid birds and pleasant growing 
things, why should they who must live in cramped 
city lodgings be deprived of all opportunity to enjoy 
God’s beneficent works, sun, air, and green fields, on 
a portion of God’s day ? 

These writers reflect that the same God who 
gave us the Bible and the Church gave us our 
reason and common sense, and was the Author of 
Nature as well as of Revelation. They would, there¬ 
fore, endorse heartily the expression of “the judi¬ 
cious Hooker”: “The very law of NaUire itself, 
which all men confess to be God's law, requireth, in 
general, no less the sanctification of times than of 
places, persons, and things, unto God’s honor.” At 
the same time they equally endorse the sentiments of 
the mild and charitable, and withal conscientious and 
discriminating, Bishop Sanderson (died 1663), who 
agreed with Bishop White (died 1638), Heylin (died 
1662), and Prideaux (died 1650), “that in judging of 
any [Sunday] recreation , regard should be paid to the 



in Modern times. 


i59 


condition of the person taking it .” The effects of 
the recreation ought also to be considered, “those 
being meetest to be used which give the best re¬ 
freshing to the body, and leave the least impression 
on the mind,” and these should be “so used as that 
they may rather make men the fitter for God's service 
the rest of the day, and for the works of their vocations 
the rest of the week .” 

This, whether absolutely right or wrong, is at least 
obviously, in the light of present experience, a mean, 
if not the happy mean, between the strict Scotch- 
Presbyterian Sunday of a century or more ago, on the 
one hand, and, on the other hand, all-day public ex¬ 
cursions by land or water, involving hard labor to 
many, and fatiguing excess to all, besides necessary 
absence from all worship. But may not this latter 
be the inevitable, however disastrous, reaction from 
the former? 

One of the above-named writers* says : “It is also 
an aim of the writer to recall the attention of divines 
and serious laymen to the much-neglected, but in¬ 
creasingly fruitful, field of natural religion. From 
its diligent culture there is reason to hope for a rich 
harvest of good to mankind ; in particular, we may 
learn in it more and more how to spend beneficially 
the leisure of the Sabbath.” Observation of the hea¬ 
then world makes this result, however, quite doubt- 

* Cox, “Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties, Considered in 
Relation to their Natural and Scriptural Grounds,” etc. Edin¬ 
burgh, 1853. 



i6o 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


ful, except in devout conjunction with an honored and 
accepted revelation. 

Expediency has an elevated meaning with these ad¬ 
vocates of the Lord’s Day. They consider the day 
as being so largely grounded in natural religion as to 
account for the absence of any such positive institu¬ 
tion of it in the New Testament, as there is for the 
sacraments. They say: Expediency is “chiefly an 
expression for the manifest uses of an act or regula¬ 
tion ; and . . . what sanction can possibly be 

higher or more sacred ? Is not the good that flows 
from any deed or institution the clearest manifesta¬ 
tion that such is a duty — a distinct command of the 
Almighty?” From this it seems evident that this 
school of thinkers do not, by natural lazv , mean an 
evasion of, or substitute for, the law of God, but an 
intelligible expression of it. Accordingly, another 
writer says :* “If the utility of the institution shall 
be made to appear, we shall need no further proof of 
its being the will of God that we should observe it.” 
And again :f “The principle that moral duties are to 
be performed, not only because they are agreeable to 
reason, but in obedience to the Divine will, is fully ad¬ 
mitted by those who reject the notion that the Deca¬ 
logue ever bound anybody but the Jews ; the law of 
nature, partly included in the Decalogue, is, in their 
estimation, ns clearly the law of God to all men, as 
the Decalogue was to his chosen people.” 


* Cox, Lit. Sab., II : 435. f Cox. Lit. Sab., II : 296. 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


161 


The existence of this natural-religion theory of the 
Lord’s Day may have one good purpose, at least, in 
checking a wrong inference from the absence of ex¬ 
press New Testament command for the observance 
of that day. That is, it may prevent people either 
from saying that there is no authority for the day, or 
from flying to the Mosaic law for its chief or only au¬ 
thority, and may lead them to say with Dr. Hawkins :* 
“The religious observance of the Lord’s Day . . . 

is almost universally acknowledged as a Christian 
duty throughout the Christian world. . . . Is it 

even necessary that the duty should be explicitly en¬ 
joined in the Christian Scriptures, which, even with¬ 
out a specific command, can be distinctly perceived, 
and this not only by the considerate Christian, but 
even by the statesman, the moralist, the philanthro¬ 
pist, to be at once a duty and a blessing? ” 

The Quaker views substantially accord with those 
now quoted, and we, therefore, have made room for a 
representative example of them. 

It seems probable, we may remark before making a 
quotation, that a part, at least, of the providential 
reason for the existence of any religious sect, is the 
maintenance of some valuable truth, which would 
otherwise be in danger of being lost, or, if not lost, 
obscured. Again : the existence of a tendency to a 
too-exclusively Sunday religion, having an altogether 
inadequate effect on the daily life, is often admitted 


Bampton Lectures, 1840. Quoted by Hessey, p. 354. 



1 62 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


and deplored. Putting these two things together, 
and adding a thought of the peculiarly fine humanity, 
sobriety, and peace-loving virtues of the Quakers, all 
unite to lend interest to the following extract, indica¬ 
tive of their spiritualized views of the Lord’s Day, 
and showing that, in their way, they consider it, in a 
very elevated sense, of perpetual obligation. 

Robert Barclay (1648-1690), in his celebrated 
“Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 
a full Explanation and Vindication of their [the 
Quakers’] Principles and Doctrines, etc.,” writes 
thus (as quoted by Cox): * “It appears, then, that 
we are not against set times for worship, 
only these times being appointed for outward con- 
veniency; we may not, therefore, think with the 
Papists that these days are holy, and lead people into 
a superstitious observance of them, being persuaded 
that all days are alike holy in the sight of God. And 
although it be not my present purpose to make a 
long digression concerning the debates among Prot¬ 
estants about the first day of the week , commonly 
called the Lord’s Day, yet, forasmuch as it comes fitly 
in here, I shall briefly signify our sense thereof. 

“We, not seeing any ground in Scripture for it, 
can not be so superstitious as to believe that either 
the Jewish Sabbath now continues, or that the first 
day of the week is the antitype thereof, or the true 
Christian Sabbath, which, with Calvin, we believe to 


* Lit. Sab. Question. Vol. II, p. 72. 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


163 


v. 


have a more spiritual sense, and therefore we know 
no moral obligation by the Fourth Command, or else¬ 
where, to keep the first day of the week more than 
any other, or any holiness inherent in it. But, first, 
forasmuch as it is necessary that there be some times 
set apart for the saints to meet together to wait upon 
God; and that, secondly, it is fit at some times they 
be freed from their other outward affairs; and that, 
thirdly, reason and equity doth allow that servants 
and beasts have some time allowed them to be eased 
from their continual labor; and that, fourthly, it ap¬ 
pears that the apostles and primitive Christians did 
use the first day of the week for these purposes; we 
find ourselves sufficiently moved for these causes to 
do so also, without superstitiously straining the 
Scriptures for another reason ; which, that it is not 
to be there found, many Protestants, yea, Calvin 
himself, upon the Fourth Command, hath abund¬ 
antly evinced. And though we therefore meet and 
abstain from working on this day, yet doth not that 
hinder us from having meetings for worship at other 
times.” 

In another of Barclay’s works, “Truth Cleared of 
Calumnies” (1670), he says: “We read much in 
Scripture of the day of the Lord, which is the Lord’s 
Day; but nowhere do we find it called the first day 
of the week, or any other natural day, for it is spirit¬ 
ual . . . And if thou wilt say it [the Sunday] 

is to be a holy day because he [Christ] rose on it, is 
not this a fair inlet to all the Popish holy days ? If 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


164 


ye keep one day for his resurrection, why not another 
for his birth, etc., etc. ?”* 

This extract contains several points of interest. 
It shows a strong reaction from unauthorized Popish 
holy days in not daring to join the Primitive Church 
in grounding the sacredness of the Lord’s Day on 
the Resurrection, for fear of superstitious commemo¬ 
ration of too many other events in Christ’s life. But 
it seems to have been forgotten, first, that the Church 
was guided by the Spirit in what it did, and in what 
it did not do ; and, second, that as all the other events 
of Christ’s life would have been fruitless but for his 
Resurrection (1 Cor. xv : 14), that was the all ab orb¬ 
ing event of his heavenly mission, and may filly be 
commemorated without giving any or more than an¬ 
nual notice to the other marked points of his earthly 
life. And as to Popish holy days, they are'on an im¬ 
measurably lower plane, having — at least in some 
cases — no necessary connection at all with the life 
of the Lord. 

Though most of the authorities now quoted belong 
to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, yet it 
seems quite unnecessary to continue quotations down 
to the present time, tediously to reader and writer 
alike. This is evident from the fact that the extracts 
already given represent four classes of thinkers, who, 
however practically agreed, long have been, now are, 
and probably long will be, in existence as advocates 


* Cox, Lit. Sab. Question. 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


165 


of their respective theories of their largely common 
Practice. 

We may style the parties holding these theories, 
the ecclesiastical , grounding their opinions primarily 
on the idea of Church rights, power, and authority, 
in the grand sense that the Church may, for supposed 
good reason, at any time authoritatively originate, 
alter, or abolish a holy day ; the evangelical , ground¬ 
ing primarily on Scripture, and especially on the New 
Testament, and on the Church subordinately, as 
guided by the Spirit, and by apostolic example; the 
naturalistic , grounding primarily or largely on natural 
religion, or the law of Nature ; and the Judaical , or 
Sabbatarian , grounding more than others do on the 
Old Testament,—whether from a constitutional crav¬ 
ing for explicit commands as a ground of obligation, 
or rule of action, or as a reaction, especially from the 
first party, lest, in the fancied absence of sufficient 
authority in the New Testament, because the au¬ 
thority there found is not in the form of peremptory 
orders, they must have recourse to the Old, as a 
refuge from merely ecclesiastical authority. 

These are, so to speak, the four component forces, 
partly co-operative, partly antagonistic, whose joint 
operation or resultant nevertheless doubtless keeps 
opinion, and feeling, and practice on the Lord’s Day 
more earnest, healthy, and constant than they might 
otherwise be. 

If by Church authority , the Church universal, not 
local; the Church guided by the indwelling Spirit, 




166 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


and not by man’s will alone; the Church as the 
brotherhood of its entire membership, and not of a 
priesthood only, be meant, it is a valuable force to aid 
in keeping alive and regulating the Lord’s Day ob¬ 
servance. 

If by Scriptural authority , the sufficiency of the 
New Testament, as against a primary and principal 
grounding on the Old Testament be meant, it is well. 

If by natural authority , or the law of Nature, or 
natural religion, be meant the harmony of Nature and 
Revelation,—that both are of authority and mutually 
confirmatory because having the same Author, with¬ 
out insisting that the light of Nature alone is sufficient 
(which heathen life well enough shows is not the 
case), and with a recollection that peoples, who have 
long lived in the light of Revelation, can not certainly 
tell, by the light of their own experience alone, just 
how much or little Nature alone could have taught 
them, it is well. 

And if J 7 idaical authority be limited, for Christians, 
to a pledge of an equivalent for itself, or more, re¬ 
enacted on a higher plane, in a better dispensation, 
it is well. 

The grand point is, that the evangelical or New 
Testament authority for the Lord’s Day is the lead¬ 
ing, central, and principal force acting in its behalf, 
and that it is not antagonized by, but is co-operated 
with, and confirmed by, the other forces named, when 
these have their due place and degree. 

. Thus, finally, do we see something, at least, not only 



IN MODERN TIMES. 


16/ 


of the reality, but the reason, of the proposition of this 
chapter, which we trust that we have now sufficiently 
demonstrated, viz., that the providential preservation 
of the Lord’s Day through the vicissitudes of con¬ 
flicting opinion relating to it in modenj times, is a 
distinct and strong contribution to its claim to be re¬ 
garded as of Divine origin, and hence of lasting obli¬ 
gation. 

In reviewing only the skeleton of the modern his¬ 
tory of the Lord’s Day here presented, we can clearly 
see from it that, in the providential preservation of 
the day, God has made the (controversial) wrath of 
man to praise him, and has beneficently restrained 
the remainder of that wrath from harming the blessed 
day which he has made. 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


168 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LORD’S DAY IN RELATION TO MAN AND 
NATURE. 

M AN is one, as to his natural constitution, with 
mind to know, heart to feel, conscience to 
guide, and will to choose. But man is infinitely 
varied as to the details of his being, in the relative 
strength of memory, judgment, etc., the quality of 
the affections, and direction of his desires and ambi¬ 
tions, the keenness of conscience, and the force of 
will. 

Hence the Lord’s Day, as well as every other 
treasure committed to the earthen vessel of man’s 
keeping, has ever been exposed to the wear and 
strain of contentions, as to doctrine and practice 
about it, arising from the diversities among men. 

The fact of the triumphant survival of the day, 
amid the clashings of so many unquiet ages, there¬ 
fore naturally raises the question: Must not the day 
which has shown such vitality have in it some 
especially perfect adaptation to man’s entire being, 
body and soul, which has made it thus survive? 
Having now seen, from the preceding chapters, what 
the origin and unbroken history of the day have been, 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


69 


let us proceed to examine its adaptation to man’s 
being. 

The order here proposed is, we are aware, the 
opposite of that often pursued, viz., that of inferring 
the probable divine origin and intended obligation 
and permanence of the Lord’s Day, from its ration¬ 
ally and experimentally ascertained adaptation to 
human wants. Nevertheless, it seems better, that 
is, both more reverent and reasonable, to accept its 
origin and history as proving its character as a 
permanent blessed gift from God, and then to go on 
and show how, being such, it is ever found, by faithful 
trial, to be adapted to promote man’s best welfare in 
every way. (See Chap. I, § 3), and to be in beauti¬ 
ful harmony with the teachings of Nature and experi¬ 
ence. 

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for 
the Sabbath ” (Mark ii: 27). 

“ Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee ” 
(Job xii: 8). • 

“ The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done his 
marvellous works that they ought to be had in 
remembrance” (Ps. cxi:4 — Old translation). 

“Godliness is profitable unto all things, having 
promise of the life that now is, and of that which is 
to come ” (1 Tim. iv : 8). 

“ But unto the Son he saith, . . . Thou Lord 

in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the 
earth ; and the heavens are the works of thine hands” 
(Heb. i: 8, 10, see also Col. i: 13, 15-18). 



170 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


According to the last two of the foregoing passages, 
the Divine Head of the Church, which is the school 
of Christ to preserve and to teach the godliness 
which is “profitable unto all things,” is also thQ 
Creator of man and of Nature. 

In his Gospel, he has thus wedded Natural Religion 
to Christianity. In these and similar passages (com¬ 
pare John i : 1-3, 10, 14, and Gen. i : 14), and in the 
parables of our Lord, Christianity has taken up into 
itself, has thus transfigured and glorified, Natural 
Religion ; and has divinely shown that though “the 
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God,” the spiritual man can derive much of spiritual 
truth from the natural creation.* 

We are therefore permitted, more truly, as well as 
more reverently to treat this chapter, with whatever 
of “signs in the sun, and in the moon,” of holy time, 
it may disclose, as part and parcel of the general 
Christian argument for the Lord’s Day. 

In this chapter we shall, accordingly, earnestly 
and affectionately hope and strive to contribute 
something, if only an imperfect little, towards satisfy¬ 
ing those harassed spirits, who have known govern¬ 
ment only, or largely, as despotism; and religion 
only, or mostly, as Christianity disguised, perhaps 

*' See, for example, “Pater Mundi,” by Rev. E. F. Burr; 
“Bible Teachings in Nature,” Macmillan & Co., London; 
“ Lessons of Grace in the Language of Nature,” T. Nelson & 
Sons, London; “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” James 
Pott, New York. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


171 


even beyond recognition, by corruptions. We shall 
—while hoping to strengthen in all minds an appre¬ 
ciation of the practical value of the Lord’s Day—' 
incidentally hope to satisfy those, who have reason 
to complain of religion and government, as they have 
known them, that there is government without des¬ 
potism, and, especially, that there is religion without 
cunning priestcraft, blinding superstition, or neglect 
of good morals, or of man’s earthly as well as future 
welfare. 

One powerfully correcting and assuring thought is, 
that, as every thing genuine has its counterfeit, or 
adulteration, so there could be no counterfeit or 
adulteration, unless these were the more valuable 
genuine to be basely imitated or corrupted. 

We shall hope, therefore, to help to show that pure 
Christianity is not only consistent with the most 
large-hearted, world-embracing love to man, but, 
far more than that, that it is truly the fountain-head 
of such love in its best strength and purity, and that 
it seeks to use its day of holy rest, as well as all its 
other agencies, only to promote the highest good, in 
every respect, of every human being. 

God and Nature gave to man the Lord’s Day as a 
benefit. Man has a right to it. No man has a right 
to deprive him of it. 

We may, therefore, proceed, unconfused and not 
disquieted by the theories and contentions about this 
unalterable fact of the Lord’s Day, to consider sepa¬ 
rately, and more fully than before, the practical bene- 



172 


THE SUNDA Y QUESTION. 


fits of the day to mankind, though there is the less 
need of doing this at much length, owing to the ful¬ 
ness with which public attention has been especially 
called to this practical department of the subject by 
the many valuable and energetic printed and spoken 
appeals of Sabbath committees and conventions.* 

Relation to Man. 

“ The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for 
the Sabbath” (Mark ii : 27). 

Imagine a creating Deity saying to himself, “ I have 
set apart a regularly returning day for my own glory, 
that on it I may gratify myself with the loyal homage 
of my creatures, and I will so order the goings on of 
my creation that they shall be compelled, or at least 
shall find it most for their own convenience, to ob¬ 
serve my will in this matter.” 

But not so is the Sabbath, or “day of rest,” ordained 
by the true and living God. We may rather think 
of him as saying: “ I have made a creature, man, in my 
own image, in that he possesses an immortal spirit, 
a rational mind, and a free will; capable, therefore, 
within the limits of his capacities, of being, like my¬ 
self, an originator. Having made him so that alter¬ 
nations of labor and rest are necessary for his best 
welfare, I have adapted the succession of day and 
night to his wants. Having further made him so 

* See Sabbath Essays, 1880; and the important aadresses 
and documents of the New York Sabbath Committee. 



DELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


173 


that the earth he dwells on shall invite the exercise 
of his powers, and so that he, for his well-being, shall 
need to exercise them, I have also formed him with 
a necessity for occasional suspensions of the noise, 
fatigue, and monotony of earthly toils, and with a 
capacity for using these intervals for the refreshment 
of his entire being, by bodily rest from wearing labors, 
and by spiritual rest in turning his free thoughts to 
me and my works, as existing to uplift and refresh his 
being , as well as to command his industry 

This view of the Sabbath, or a weekly holy rest, as 
made and provided for man, shows that if the Jewish 
seventh-day Sabbath was not to be perpetual, it was 
the pledge of a Sabbath, and a better one, for all 
men in the fulness of time. We shall next, there¬ 
fore, find it interesting to seek for indications that 
the weekly Sabbath, or rest-day, as a long-established 
fact, is not conventional or arbitrary, but is founded 
in Nature. 


The Week Natural. 

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament 
of the heaven, . . . and let them be for signs, 

and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Gen. 
i : 14). 

Some able and devout thinkers have, indeed, main¬ 
tained that the week is an artificial division of time, 
and that the Sabbath is, therefore, wholly grounded 
on supernatural authority, or could only be known by 
revelation. But we venture to suggest that in the 




174 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


multiplicity of their thoughts this one topic may not 
have been quite sufficiently pondered. True, indeed, 
it may be that the heathen knew no day of holy rest,* 
yet we shall hope to show that the week is a natural 
period, and hence that the Lord’s Day has a natural 
foundation, whether perceived or not. 

Let us now seek to divest ourselves of all our as¬ 
tronomical knowledge, and, transporting ourselves in 
imagination to the infancy of the world and of man¬ 
kind, diligently inquire, what divisions of time seem 
to be plainly marked in Nature, and how. Indeed, to 
be the more thorough, let us go back a step further 
and seek for the conditions under which divisions of 
time would seem to be marked as natural. 

We think we find four conditions, though there 
may be more. First: The appearances, which serve 
as marks of time, should be conspicuous,enough to 
attract general notice. Second : They should be of 
regular recurrence, and the more frequent the recur¬ 
rence, the more quickly and generally noticeable the 
indicating phenomenon will be. Third : It will be an 

* We read of the teeming population of about 35,000,000 in 
the Empire of Japan : “ Their industry is ceaseless, they have 
no Sabbath ”; and the terrible prevalence of filth and disease 
found in the rural districts, 

“ Where every prospect pleases, 

And only man is vile,” 

powerfully suggests that the absence of a periodic day of rest 
is one cause of their squalor and misery .—Unbeaten Tracks in 
Japan, Vol. 1 ,p. 120. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE 


175 


added advantage if the’appearance be one which can 
be easily beheld, and not too dazzling, as is the noon¬ 
day sun. Fourth : A further advantage will be the 
occurrence of the sign at night, the natural time of 
meditation and of contemplation of the heavens. 

Turning our backs, now, on present knowledge, 
and entering the natural world as if for the first time, 
what should we find ? Sunrise and sunset would, 
from their regular and frequent occurrence and grand 
splendor, probably soonest attract universal atten¬ 
tion. The interval from either to its own next recur¬ 
rence would be a well-marked natural division, the day. 

Recollecting that now nearly three-fourths, and 
probably always a majority, of mankind are, or have 
been, in the north temperate zone, the seasons and 
the regularly variable height of the noonday sun 
could not long escape notice. The more patiently 
observant, who were also disposed to record their ob¬ 
servations, if only by a notched stick, would, before 
many years, make out three hundred and sixty-five 
sunrises, or days, between the sun’s greatest noon¬ 
day-height, and hence their own shortest shadow, and 
the next recurrence of the same, and would thus, at 
least roughly, establish the year. 

But the mild beauty of the moon, with her regular, 
beautiful, and frequent changes, would doubtless 
sooner attract general attention than the far less fre¬ 
quently recurring and less easily-noted highest noon¬ 
day altitudes of the sun. 

Interesting in itself, convenient as a shorter time- 



176 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


measure than a year, and helpful in keeping track of 
the sun’s annual rounds, it would come to be noticed 
that more than twelve and less than thirteen periods 
of the moon from full to full, occur in one year. In 
choosing between these numbers as a divisor of the 
year into shorter periods, two considerations would 
point to twelve. First, there are nearer twelve than 
thirteen lunations in a year. Second, this natural 
fact happily agrees with the superior convenience in 
common life of even numbers having numerous small 
divisors, such as twelve, which is divisible by two, 
three, four, and six. Thus a comparison of the moon’s 
circuits' with those of the sun, easily leads to the 
division of the year into twelve equal months. 
Though these do not exactly measure the moon’s 
circuits, they nevertheless readily suggest them. 

Next, the four plainly observable lunar changes are 
new, first quarter (or half-full, towards sunset), full, 
and last quarter (or half-full towards sunrise). Now, 
recollecting that these phases would, in early times, 
be estimated by the eye, and not by instrumental 
observation, and that, as one may learn from a com¬ 
mon almanac, fifty of these changes occur in the year 
—or one in about seven and one-third days—I sub¬ 
mit that seven sunrises (or sunsets) would be counted, 
between each change and the next, with a sufficient 
degree of regularity to mark seven days, or the week, 
as distinctly to common observation, as a natural 
division of time, as the day, or the month, or the year 
is marked. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE . 


177 


Or, if a subdivision of the artificial month, or 
twelfth of the year, be sought, the moon’s quarters 
would suggest four, rather than two, three, or six, as 
the divisor of twelve to be chosen in subdividing the 
month. The week, thus found, would be longer than 
the one founded on the natural lunar month, but still 
would contain no more than seven of whole days. 
Thus the week is suggested both by the observation 
of the moon alone, and by comparing its motions with 
those of the sun. Its inexactness as a measure seems 
to be no bar to its adoption as a suggestion from Na¬ 
ture ; for the year contains no exact number of equal 
months, weeks, or days ; the month is not composed 
of an integral number of weeks, or of days; and, 
finally, the acceptance of the week as a gift of Nature , 
would not seem to interfere, but would rather agree 
with, God’s making it sacred and giving it a spiritual 
use and meaning by associating it with some of his 
own marvellous doings. 

As to the question, why the week should, as it 
actually has been from the beginning, have been 
chosen, rather than the month, or year, to be hallowed 
by a sacred initial or closing day, we will venture to 
add, at the risk of being thought fanciful, that division 
by two is first and simplest of all, and that three is 
the number signifying completeness, as that of solids, 
which, alone, have three dimensions, and are real — 
surfaces, lines, and points having no existence inde¬ 
pendent of the solids to which they belong. Now the 
week has two threes of days, and an odd one oven 



178 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


asking what shall be done with it, and quite naturally 
suggesting itself to man as a vacation day from the 
cares and labors of the other six days, in behalf of the 
welfare of his higher life, and for the grateful filial 
worship of the Author of all days. 

Then let man take it thankfully for his own, in the 
grandest and noblest way, as an opportunity to know 
God the Father who made him, and to learn his most 
wise and holy will, that he may, for his own best 
good, gladly do it at all times. Thus used, in holy 
rest for body and soul, man makes it most fully his 
own, while also best honoring it as God’s. 

Having thus thought out the equal naturalness of 
the week with the day, the month, and the year, as 
marked by the lunar motions, the sub-division of the 
month, and by the numerical arrangement of its 
days, let not lack of faith, with no lack of conceit, 
tempt us to make too much of it. If God has given 
to mankind lights in the firmament to be for signs, 
and if he has given to man the week, and, as the 
“sign” of it, the phases of that lesser light whose 
ever-fresh and welcome beauty is linked in with the 
best experiences of saints, sages, poets, and lovers, 
then it is enough that there the week is, wherever we 
go, the wide world over, ready and waiting to be put to 
good use, though man may not know its best use, and 
in some cases may not know of its existence, or of 
any use for it. If, then, we know that in China, and in 
Peru, in ancient Chaldea, with its patient star-gazers, in 
Egypt, and thence in the mighty Roman empire, the 



HALATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


179 


week was known, it is enough.* We need not labor 
to prove how, or how much, one day of it was relig¬ 
iously and restfully used. Two or three deep-seated 
instincts or principles of human nature may be trusted 
to respond to the properly introduced proposal of such 
a day. First, periodicity, or the substantially uni¬ 
versal practice of generally doing regularly, or at set 
times, whatever is habitually done. Sleep, meals, 
and labor are not only in every day’s experience, but 
are usually at regular hours of the day. So that if 
any day of the week were to be devoted to other than 
common uses, it would naturally be the same day in 
each week. Second, desire for refreshment, through 
variety of occupation, as well as by absolute rest. 
Third : But besides these two merely earthward in¬ 
stincts there is the instinct of honor and grateful affec¬ 
tion, namely, that to the giver belongs such return 
for the gift as the receiver can make. But if the 
giver be the creator of his gift, then the returns of 
the creature, however heartfelt, must of necessity be 
described by the words, “We give Thee but Thine 
own, whate’er the offering be.” If, then, the gift be 
a period of time, as the week, which is an indepen¬ 
dent natural whole, as much so as the day or the year, 
then a day out of each week, and, very appropriately, 
the first, should be devoted to the Giver, in such ways 
as are possible, such as devout contemplation of him 
in his works and in any other communication of him* 


*The Lord’s Day, Am. Sch. Union, Philad., 1885. 



i8o 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


self which he may credibly be supposed to have made; 
united worship of him by those who are all alike 
indebted to him, and bound to acknowledge him ; and 
such ministrations to both the souls and bodies of 
his creatures as especially recognize them as his, and 
such as recognize companionship in immortality. 

Such are the results to which a thoughtful contem¬ 
plation of times and seasons may conceivably be sup¬ 
posed to lead. Whether they ever did, or would, in 
fact, have led, of themselves alone, to such a result, 
rather than to the monstrous opposite described in 
Romans i, or to the blind worship of the “host of 
heaven,” may well be questioned. The case may be 
compared to that of a student working* on a problem. 
He might never discover its solution by his own 
efforts alone, and yet, when the solution, was shown 
to him, he might wonder that he had never thought of 
it before. So, however natural the hallowing of one 
day in seven may seem to Christian thought, the 
world, unillumined by Christianity, might never have 
thought to do it. 

The architectural and sculptural glories of Athens, 
as they sprang into existence under the guidance and 
skill of Pericles* and Phidias, after the Persian con¬ 
quest, afford perhaps as high an example as can be 
found of what a noble-minded people can do with 
restless energy, under the action of sublime impulses, 

* Plutarch’s Lives: Pericles. Also, Lubke’s or other His¬ 
tories of Art. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. l8l 


among which some idea, however vague, of gratitude 
to the gods was one. 

Nature and Revelation. 

Something further may, therefore, properly be said 
here of the comparative value and the proper relative 
position of arguments from Nature and from Reve¬ 
lation in behalf of the Lord’s Day. The argument 
for the Lord’s Day from Nature can, in the light of 
human reason and experience, even at its best, hardly 
do more than one of two things : First —It may 
propitiate those who wish no other argument for 
any thing, by showing so high a probability of the 
utility and consequent obligation of the Day, as a 
matter of expediency, as to invite to a fair trial of it, 
and to an examination of its claims on higher and 
more authoritative grounds. Also, second —Accord¬ 
ing to a principle stated in Chapter I, this argu¬ 
ment may form a pleasantly rewarding exercise of 
the faculties of a believer in Revelation, by showing 
him more confirmations in Nature and life of the 
wisdom of God’s commands than he had suspected. 
Accordingly, to all who, with, let us hope, uncon¬ 
scious lack of proper reverence, go outside of all 
Revelation, to Nature and human experience, for 
any thing more than pleasing confirmations of what 
finds its highest authority in Scripture, we may say 
further: “Beware lest any man spoil you through 
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of 
men, after the rudiments of this world [the dim hints 



THE SLNDA Y QUESTION. 


182 


in Nature and life of what is plain in Scripture and 
in the universal Christian mind as guided by the 
Spirit] and not after Christ ’’.(Col. ii : 8). 

These guiding principles show the proper relative 
value , and the proper relative position and magni¬ 
tude , of the argument from Nature and experience, 
in the general argument for the Lord’s Day. 

To the Christian, the value of the argument from 
Nature and life is secondary, and its position subordi¬ 
nate to that from Revelation. The idea of Revela¬ 
tion, as a communication from an infinite and faithful 
God to finite and dependent creatures, is the most 
natural of ideas, next to that of God himself, and 
it is a part of the idea of Revelation that it con¬ 
tains what we otherwise could not know, or should 
lose if once possessed, and also contains matter, delay 
and doubt in finding out which would be disastrous. 
Hence the results of our own experience and our un¬ 
aided inquiries are ever to be reverentially subordi¬ 
nated to Divine communications. Hence, also, the ar¬ 
gument from experience need not be long or labored, 
after a full exhibition of that from Revelation. 

From the above preliminary inquiry as to the foun¬ 
dation in Nature and human nature of a weekly day 
of rest for body and soul, and from the reflections 
prompted by it, we now pass on to exhibit, somewhat 
in detail, the adaptation of such a day of rest as Na¬ 
ture seems to suggest, to the known conditions for 
man’s total well-being, as that adaptation seems to be 
ascertained by reason and experience, 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


183 


The Benefits of the Lord’s Day. 

Mari s physical well-being requires food, air, light, 
cleanliness, clothing, and shelter, with alternations of 
work and play, labor and rest. 

Food, to afford the greatest pleasure and benefit, 
should be taken at leisure, in quiet, and with agree- 
• able company. To all those vast numbers, opera¬ 
tives or others, whose daily duties in connection with 
agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and the im¬ 
mense carrying trade of to-day, render these condi¬ 
tions difficult to be more than partially fulfilled 
during the six days of labor, the Lord’s Day affords 
ample opportunity for meals enjoyed in the peace and 
quiet of home. 

Air , in connection with many pursuits, is difficult 
to be obtained in purity, unmixed with unwholesome 
fumes or dust. But the home, the church, the garden, 
or the field, all consecrated by the Lord’s Day, do, or 
may and should, afford abundant reviving breath. 

Natural light is absent or diminished to workers in 
mines, and largely so to those in the dim interiors of 
colossal warehouses, which the magnitude of modern 
commerce and the enforced contractedness of the 
spaces of great cities render necessary. But the 
twenty-four hours’ intermission of a Lord’s Day 
affords refuge from depressing and unwholesome 
duskiness, for grateful enjoyment of the light, which 
is sweet and freely provided by the all-loving “Father 
of Lights,” 



184 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


“Put yourself in his place,” should be the awaken¬ 
ing motto over every abode of ease and of leisure, so 
that those who can daily enjoy the precious blessings 
of food, air, and light to their hearts’ content, should 
realize, as far as possible, the less favored situation of 
those to whom these blessings, under refreshing con¬ 
ditions, are rarities. 

Especially may those who pace their own quiet 
garden walk, or secluded grass plat, compassionate 
those who own not a foot of ground, nor can hardly 
hope ever to do so. So that, while a sharp line can 
be drawn between such Sunday recreations as are 
tiresome, long-continued, involve necessary absence 
from church, and the hard labor of others, and those 
of which none of these things are true, let the latter 
be looked upon as we look upon the Master’s walk 
with his disciples through the field of corn. So every 
dense municipality, where garden or rural strolls — 
easily enjoyed without interference with church at¬ 
tendance, or with profitable home reading, music, 
and reflection, — are not accessible to every one, 
provide ample parks, distributed within easy reach of 
all, where weary bodies and souls may bathe in sun¬ 
shine, pure air, and the soothing, tranquilizing rustle 
of leaves, and the cheering brightness of flowers, and 
sparkle of waters, without interfering with sacred 
duties. 

Participation in the devices which make up a merely 
man-made Sunday is fatiguing and unsatisfying. 
But the true Lord’s Day, to which his Church and 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


I8 5 


qis Creation both contribute, is uplifting and refresh¬ 
ing, whether enjoyed actively or passively. For the 
spirit is rested by change , not by inaction; and, in 
happy agreement with this fact, the themes naturally 
appropriate to the Lord’s Day are as far from merely 
worldly ones as the heavens are above the earth. 
Yet they are not unrelated to them, but vitalize all 
wholesome earthly activities, as the sun vitalizes the 
animal and vegetable world. Then, in turning from 
the sanctuary to the fields and lanes and hills, the whole 
being passively bathes and restfully loses itself in the 
flood of light, and air, and color, and space that en¬ 
velops it. This we have too often seen, in the case 
of multitudes of a busy population, to doubt it. 

Better yet, however, would it be if every man had his 
own house, with grass plat, tree, and vine; and there 
is no natural impossibility of its being so. Only sin 
and folly prevent ; such sin and folly, on the one 
hand, as would “lay field to field until there be no 
place” for him who can and would own even only a 
little of God’s beautiful green earth; and, also, we 
must say, such sin and folly, on the other hand, as 
waste on consuming dissipation, or on useless trifles 
and brief self-indulgences, the means with which 
thrift and foresight would soon procure a home. 

Cleanliness , like every thing else, often requires 
some motive for its observance beyond the good it 
may do one; something external to interest one, and 
for the sake of which it is attended to. A periodical 
day of refreshing freedom from the harness, some- 



THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


186 


times galling, of daily duty, a day when each one feels 
himself a man, and recurring often enough to keep 
alive a sense of the dignity and glory of true man¬ 
hood or womanhood, invites to self-respect; and self- 
respect invites to cleanliness of person, apparel, and 
surroundings. In this relation, the weekly Lord’s 
Day is invaluable. One day in seven, with three in 
which to look back upon it, with joyful and thankful 
recollection, and three more in which to look forward 
to it in glad anticipation, as the day in which the 
whole man and his household are at their best, — this 
is, indeed, “ the day which the Lord has made, we 
will rejoice and be glad in it.” It is a day which 
dignifies the life and labors of other days, so that it 
is simply no more than any one might expect, that, 
as has often been stated, the English and American 
Sunday is admired as a part, at least, of the secret of 
Anglo-Saxon greatness. 

Clothing and shelter come to the aid of cleanliness. 
With the motive for neat and clean clothing afforded 
by the Lord’s Day freedom, dignity, and rest, and 
just in proportion as the Church does its duty, in 
making it to be plainly seen and joyfully felt that 
Christianity is, in very deed, a mightily uplifting 
agency to man’s entire being, the Lord’s Day acts 
to break up the monotony of an unvaried week. 
Simply seeing or knowing one’s self to be in respect¬ 
able clothing, and sitting in a neat and perhaps ele¬ 
gant building, in which one feels that he has both 
social and religious rights, and a welcome from 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


18/ 


friends, keeps alive a feeling of the ideal self which 
is enwrapped within every actual self. The Lord’s 
Day, even if only by putting every one at his best 
simply as a thinking and feeling being, one day in 
every week, affords invaluable possibilities for good, 
and opens the human spirit to the most elevating 
influences. Enlightened Christian philanthropy may 
therefore well apply itself, as happily it more and 
more does, to providing not only everywhere suffi¬ 
cient and easily enjoyed church accommodations, but 
the preliminary conditions of justly due opportunity, 
clothing, and especially, of unaffected and kindly 
human recognition, which go to make the accommo¬ 
dations acceptable and practically available to the 
properly self-respecting. 

Then from the shelter of the church building, 
regarded with pleasure as a common home, individ¬ 
uals and families will learn renewed devotion to their 
separate homes, or even to the lodgings which a con¬ 
tented mind will lead them to adorn and take pleas¬ 
ure in as a temporary home. Thus church and 
family life go hand in hand, each sweetening and 
strengthening the other. Voluntary neglecters of 
either, thinking to be wiser for themselves than their 
Creator and Redeemer is for them, are their own 
worst enemies. So are they who, in blind prejudice, 
deprive themselves of their highest privileges , because 
others neglect their duties. 

In all these reflections, the thought is uppermost, 
that man should ever be impartially regarded more 




THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


188 


for the sake of the immortal associations of his being 
as God’s child and as destined to immortality, 
than of such relatively pitiful mortal associations as 
his earthly origin, pursuits, and condition. How are 
justly sensitive souls ever to be won to the kingdom 
of heaven, or be made happy citizens in it, if they are 
first of all practically made to understand by their 
more privileged fellow-citizens in the kingdom of 
God, that all their efforts to realize the promise that 
godliness is profitable to their highest earthly as well 
as eternal welfare will be in vain, and that Christianity 
can not break down the barriers which petty earthly 
pride sets up ? 

Labor and rest. People suffer equally from excess 
of labor and of rest, from tasks that must be done, 
and from the weary listlessness {ennui) that follows 
from never having any thing to do but to tKink how 
to “kill time.” To th z former, the Lord’s Day rest is 
a priceless boon, and nothing should be more care¬ 
fully avoided than to deprive them of it by a blind 
and careless selfishness, seeking only self-indulgent 
ease at the expense of the comfort and natural rights 
of others. Such a course only gives to those thus 
selfishly defrauded a grossly perverted idea of the 
Lord’s Day, and naturally begets in them a bitter 
prejudice against it. 

To the latter , the Lord’s Day affords life-long 
opportunity for contact with their busier fellows, in 
a way to know their moral and social wants, and to 
minister to them in wholesome ways, tending to 




RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 189 


knit all classes and conditions together as they 
should be. 

But on the general question of work and play , as 
connected with the Lord’s Day, we mean by work, 
constrained action, and by play, not games and sports, 
but simply freedom of motion. Many industries 
require constrained positions, and limited and partial 
muscular action. A weekly day of freedom, both for 
body and mind, affords an opportunity, not only for 
spiritual instruction and refreshment, by worship and 
reading, with wholesome social refreshment in con¬ 
certed worship and friendly greetings, and for rest 
from fatigue, but for the benefit found, in change of 
position and motion, from the cramping pursuits of 
the week. 

Various writers have said in relation to the neces¬ 
sary alternation of labor and rest , that each night’s 
sleep is not, in the long run, a sufficient means of 
restoration, and that a periodical day of freedom and 
rest is necessary besides.* 

Let us look awhile at the proof of this doubtless 
correct assertion. Sleep may be described as invol¬ 
untary, mechanical, and necessary to physical exist¬ 
ence. We must sleep or die, as we must eat or die. 
Vice-president Wilson, among other heroic incidents 
in the preparatory stage of his wonderful and always 
indefatigable career, once resolved to make fifty pairs 
of shoes without stopping. But when nearly through 

* Sabbath Essays, 1880, pp. 27-35. 



90 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


with this great task, he fell asleep on his bench, 
involuntarily, hammer in hand. 

But the rest of sleep, whether in cases like this, or 
in that of every night, serves only the body primarily, 
and the mind only as the body is its servant, or in¬ 
strument. That is, mere sleep does not satisfy the 
idea of recreation. Recreation ministers directly to 
the mind, by giving it freedom to work its own pleas¬ 
ure, rather than an imposed task. Happy is that 
people, all of whom are so engaged in daily industry of 
some sort, that familiar illustrations of this point will 
appeal to their sympathies, not through their imagi¬ 
nations only, but through their daily experience. The 
recess for play, alternating with the hours of daily 
school study ; the excursion or picnic for longing 
children, or weary toilers in city streets or shops, 
the school-boy’s, the clerk’s, or the clergyman’s vaca¬ 
tion, all show that recreation is more and other than 
regular nightly sleep, and that it is equally necessary. 

But this is not all. Physiologists insist on the 
law of periodicity as one of the essential laws of health. 
Food, sleep, exercise, and all functions of body and 
mind, though admitting of limited variability for due 
cause, are best performed regularly. In a word, and 
comprehensively, this is only asserting the necessity 
and power of habit, and incidentally, therefore, the 
importance of good habit. 

Heavenly wisdom has provided for this law of its 
own making, by a weekly day of rest, a day not of 
passive or unconscious rest, like that of sleep, but of 



RELATION- TO MAN AND NATURE. 


I 9 I 


conscious rest, which mine! and body, both alike awake, 
share and enjoy together. 

In one word, man, being a combination of body and 
soul, of matter and spirit, nightly sleep is physiologi¬ 
cal rest, or rest for the body, for man as an animal; 
Sunday rest is spiritual rest, or rest for the soul, for 
man as a rational and spiritual being. 

Or yet once more, these remarks simply have 
regard to the familiar distinction between being and 
well-being. Nightly sleep is indispensable to con¬ 
tinued being. Recreation, in its highest sense of re¬ 
creation, such as is provided for most perfectly, 
for body, soul, and spirit, by one whole day of freedom 
in every week, is equally indispensable to well-being. 

Though it is no part of our present duty or purpose 
to attempt to frame a code of rules for the proper 
observance of the Lord’s Day, yet it may be interest¬ 
ing and helpful to add, just here, the general obser¬ 
vations of certain wise and good men, and which 
seem to harmonize with the spirit of Holy Scripture 
and the dictates of sound reason. 

Various persons, indeed, have undertaken to pre¬ 
scribe either general or particular rules for the ob¬ 
servance of the Lord’s Day. 

Of the former class, two may serve as good ex¬ 
amples of a wise and charitable moderation, free from 
fanaticism on the one hand, and from demoralizing 
looseness on the other. One of these, Richard Bax¬ 
ter, speaks as follows concerning what are to be ac¬ 
counted works of necessity: “Your labor is then 



192 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


lawful and a duty, when, in the judgment of a truly 
judicious person, it is like to do more good than hurt; 
and it is then sinful, when it is like to do more hurt 
than good. Though all can not discern this, yet (so 
far as I know) this is the true rule to judge such 
actions.” 

Another, by Bishop Horsley (1733-1806), author of 
three sermons on “The Sabbath,” often reprinted in 
his works or elsewhere, is longer and less vaguely 
general. He says : “An entire day is more than 
the human mind can employ with alacrity upon any 
one subject (the rule in the ‘Assembly’s Catechism’ 
prescribed ‘spending the whole time in the public 
and private exercise of God’s worship, except so 
much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity 
and mercy’). The austerity, therefore, of those is 
little to be commended who require that all the inter¬ 
vals of public worship, and whatever remains of the 
day after the public duty is satisfied, should be spent 
in the closet in private prayer and retired meditation. 
Nor are persons . . . to be very severely cen¬ 

sured— those especially who are confined to populous 
cities, where they breathe a noxious atmosphere and 
are engaged in unwholesome occupations . . . 

— if they take advantage of the leisure of the day to 
recruit their wasted strength and harassed spirits, by 
short excursions into the purer air of the adjacent 
villages, and the innocent recreations of sober society, 
provided they engage not in . . . dissipated and 
tumultuous pleasure, which . . . may interfere 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


193 


with the duties of the day. . . . The Sabbath 

was ordained for a day of public worship, and of re¬ 
freshment ... It can not be a day of refresh¬ 
ment, if it be made a day of mortified restraint. To 
be a day of worship it must be a day of leisure from 
worldly business, and of abstention from dissipated 
pleasures, but it need not be a dismal one;” 

See, also, the excellently wise, clear, and discrimi¬ 
nating precept of Archbishop Sanderson in Chapter 
VII, that innocent Sunday recreations are those 
which best fit body and mind for the religious duties 
of the day and the industries of the week. 

In connection with this topic of rules for keeping 
the Lord’s Day, and with the idea sometimes enter¬ 
tained that the Mosaic regulations are still in force, 
it is well to remember that the Jews were almost ex¬ 
clusively an agricultural and pastoral people, not 
largely a manufacturing, trading, or military one 
(1 Sam. xiii : 19, 20). Hence their secular labors were 
not of a kind, nor were conducted in such crowded, 
dusky, and poorly ventilated situations, as to induce 
an intense craving for the solace afforded by woods, 
and fields, and waters. These they had about them 
at all times, under the open sky, and this made their 
condition very different from that of the densely peo¬ 
pled manufacturing and commercial centres of other 
peoples and times. True, we are of those who be¬ 
lieve that some frequent practical connection with the 
soil, in its care and culture, is indispensable to every 
one’s best welfare and happiness, and that, in some 



194 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


form or degree, it is impossible to no one.* But we 
can not now dwell on this point, and only insist again 
that regulations, unoppressively applicable to purely 
rural pursuits, could hardly apply uniformly to the 
complex life of to-day. 

Thus far we have considered man’s physical wel¬ 
fare, chiefly, as promoted by the observance of the 
Lord’s Day, and his spiritual well-being, incidentally, 
as closely connected with the former. We will now 
proceed to consider the more immediate bearing of 
the Day on man’s moral welfare. 

Mans moral well-being requires regular culture of 
the moral nature. On such obvious common-sense 
principles as “ A place for every thing, and every thing 
in its place,” and of “One thing at a time,” there 
must be a regular and appropriate time for such moral 
culture — for especial attention to the formation of 
character. 

We will here, to make this truth more evident, 
proceed to show: First, the immense practical impor¬ 
tance of character, by an illustration drawn from a 
department of life to which the Lord’s Day should 
be felt to be a peculiarly precious advantage; and, 
second, some of the more important habits, and the 
grander elements in character, which the Lord’s Day 
affords precious opportunities for cultivating. 

First. The practical importance of excellence of 
character. An attractive image, to the vision of a 

* Eight Studies of the Lord’s Day, p. 133, etc. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


195 


lover of his kind, is that of a shop, a mill, a mercan¬ 
tile house, which is owned, and skilfully and honestly 
managed, by the associated operatives therein, as its 
partial or only owners; and in which the profits are 
divided among the whole body of joint owners, in 
proportion to the interest of each. Happily, too, this 
is not an altogether visionary suggestion, but is one 
which has here and there been successfully realized, 
in one form or another. 

But what, in relation to so happy an arrangement, 
is the foremost want of Labor to-day? I say not in 
its contentions with Capital; for the engine, which is 
Labor, and the boiler, which is Capital, are indispen¬ 
sable to each other, and therefore should never quar¬ 
rel with each other—but what, I say, is the foremost 
want of Labor, in order to so far emancipate itself 
from undue subjection to Capital, that it can (uncon¬ 
trollable events excepted) advantageously organize 
itself in co-operative industry? Is it any thing else 
than character — character made up of clear moral 
intelligence to know the right, and sturdy moral de¬ 
termination to do the right ? True, our savings banks 
indicate a gratifying amount of praiseworthy thrift 
which implies respectable character. Nevertheless, 
it remains true, and a painful fact to the philanthrop¬ 
ic heart, that large employers in diverse industries, 
and who are evidently thoughtful for the welfare of 
their men, have to deplore that too many are not seen 
again at their work until their Saturday’s wages are 
gone in carousings and in wasteful and harmful dissi- 




196 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


pations. Just so far as such things continue, there 
must be a deficiency of the necessary moral worth 
among the ranks of Labor to inspire well-founded 
mutual confidence; and without such confidence, 
added to knowledge of the industry to be pursued, 
successful co-operation is morally impossible. One 
would suppose that the splendor of the material prize 
would easily secure the self-discipline necessary to 
success. Great industrial establishments, instead of 
being monarchies, would be republics, in which, in 
place of wages, the whole net income would be equi¬ 
tably divided among all the operatives, who would be 
the owners, and who would elect the best of their 
number, in point of character and capacity, to be the 
managers. 

That a result, so joyful for every friend of Labor 
to contemplate, might be realized, Labor must have, 
besides whatever other conditions it needs, an undis¬ 
turbed enjoyment of a day of rest from daily toils, 
for rest and moral education , and for the enlighten¬ 
ment and further improvement of the moral being. 

On this and many other points, the case of Japan 
is very instructive. There is an empire of 35,000,000 
of people, or 230 to a square mile, making it one of 
the most thickly settled regions of the earth. The 
inhabitants are of good capacity, quite advanced in 
many elements of material civilization, and models of 
unceasing industry in their agriculture, domestic du¬ 
ties, and various handicrafts. Yet, in the rural dis¬ 
tricts, where neither of their two prevailing forms of re- 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


19 7 


ligion — Shintoism, a vague Nature worship without a 
priesthood, nor Buddhism, with its many singular re¬ 
semblances to Romanism, attract much attention — 
it would seem that the endless round of uninter¬ 
rupted toils was a powerful cause of the extreme filthi¬ 
ness and mental apathy that are there so sadly con¬ 
spicuous. In those towns where many and splendid 
temples are found, diverting and in some sense en¬ 
livening the people, by their daily pageantry of wor¬ 
ship, many examples of scrupulous neatness, as well 
as thrift, are found. This contrast is observed on a 
sufficiently large scale to make it clear that even so 
remote an approximation as this to a weekly holy 
rest-day is not without perceptible benefit. Yet, when 
we find, on one side of a fine avenue, a row of elegant 
temples, where the worshippers throw their prayers 
at their gods, written on paper wads; and, facing 
them on the opposite side of the avenue, a row of 
temples of vice, we also see clearly there, as every¬ 
where else, the completeness of the divorce between 
merely ceremonial religion and pure morality, and 
the immense contrast between paganism and the 
religion whose crowning blessing is reserved for the 
pure in heart. 

But to return to the principal point. If the most 
imperfect worship is thus seen to be better than none, 
how much more must the pure worship of a holy God 
uplift the being and the life of the worshipper! But 
we pass on to consider — 

Second. Some of the more important habits, and 



198 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


the larger elements in character, which the Lord’s 
Day is an aid in cultivating. 

First among these, we will mention the sritical re¬ 
view of character —whether to joyfully, though hum¬ 
bly, approve with thanksgiving, or to condemn. 

There is such a thing, as every enthusiastic worker 
knows, as the joyful and exultant contemplation of a 
good work well done. This is something entirely dif¬ 
ferent from vain boasting, and, moreover, it implies 
no disesteem, or want of sympathy, for the perform¬ 
ances of others. The same St. Paul who said that 
he was not fit to be called an apostle, and was all 
things to all men — that is, in innocent and great- 
souled sympathy—that by all means he might save 
some, was the one who also said: “I have finished 
my course; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
of life.” 

This well-earned and keen satisfaction at a good 
result accomplished, is one of the choicest elements 
of the soul’s rest. The body is refreshed by it as the 
mind is through bodily rest. This is that divine rest 
of which a hint or a glimpse is given us in human lan¬ 
guage when it is said: “ God saw every thing that 

he had made : and behold it was very good, . . . 

and he rested on the seventh day from all his work 
which he had made. And God blessed the seventh 
day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested 
from all his work” (Gen. i : 31, ii : 2, 3). That is, that 
in the divine mind, corresponding to our highest joy 
in our highest and most truly noble achievements. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


199 


was so pure, exalted, and perfect, that the day on 
which it occurred was made holy by that divine re¬ 
joicing in a mighty work, the whole of which was 
very good. 

Man, being made in God’s image, may, within the 
bounds of his finite being, enjoy a like experience. 
Thus, it is related of the eminent engineer, Robert 
Stephenson, that he was almost sleepless for the last 
three weeks before the completion of the famous 
tubular iron bridge across the Menai straits. But on 
the morning after, he was seen reclining alone on the 
platform which had accommodated the spectators on 
the day previous, and gazing with quiet delight on his 
successfully accomplished work. 

All this has an interesting bearing on the keeping 
of the Lord’s Day. One of the blessed uses of the 
day is to animate the spirit by renewed visions of the 
ideal, toward which every one should aim, in whatever, 
that is good and worthy, he is doing. Then in pro¬ 
portion as the achievements of the preceding week 
have conformed to such visions of the ideal as have 
been gained, may they justly be contemplated with 
thankful rejoicing and stimulating pleasure; while, 
in proportion as deficiencies are perceived and felt, as 
they always may be, new and higher purposes may be 
formed for better-directed effort in the week to come. 
Thus may the Lord’s Days be made the hill-tops of 
life, the views from which will at once stimulate and 
reward the efforts made in the week-day valleys be¬ 
tween. 



200 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


But, just at this point, the Church of the Living 
God proclaims its beneficent mission to be to keep 
alive in the world a high standard of duty to God and 
man; by which standard men may profitably judge 
themselves (not their neighbors); and, in spite of the 
many confessed and deplored imperfections of its 
human membership, this divine institution does in no 
small degree perform its mission. Those, therefore, 
who neglect it, needlessly and most sadly miss pre¬ 
cious opportunities for good. 

On the other hand, the Sunday newspaper, filled 
with the world in the fulness of its worldliness, has 
been declared to be one of the worst hindrances and 
undoers of the blessed work for man that the Church 
was ordained to do. It intrudes itself into the Lord’s 
Day, as an evil creature, to uproot and destroy the 
fairest growths in that bright garden of the Lord for 
the soul of man. 

What then shall we read ? many, not familiar with 
books, may honestly ask. Happily the answer is as 
easy as it is gladly given. All of the larger Christian 
denominations are now represented by one or more 
large weekly family papers, well filled by a staff of 
able and earnest editors, with a great variety of inter¬ 
esting and valuable reading, suited to all ages and tastes; 
so that it can truly be said that no intelligent parent 
could better bless his household than by taking and 
reading such a paper in his house on Sunday. If, in 
addition, there is a taste for good books, no source of 
information about them is better than these same 



KELA TION TO MAN AND NA TURE. 


201 


weekly papers. And finally, if the spiritual develop¬ 
ment of the family permits the taking of a quiet after¬ 
noon hour anywhere, for the whole family-circle to 
join in the simple reading of a chapter of gospel, 
or epistle, or of sacred proverb, or story, each reading 
in turn, and questioning the rest on the part he has 
read ; they would doubtless soon find, as others have, 
that the mingled home-delight and benefit of so 
sweet a form of family life will reward them a thou¬ 
sand-fold more in pure home affection, and in moral 
strength and intelligence, than any other Sunday 
occupation or recreation that they could find. 

Second. Another topic of high importance, in con¬ 
nection with the formation of character as aided by 
the proper observance of the Lord’s Day, is the con¬ 
trast between genuine and counterfeit freedom. If I 
am an entire stranger in the vast city of London, and 
wish to see Westminster Abbey, I may say to myself, 
True freedom consists in accomplishing, with the 
greatest ease and certainty, the purpose for which I 
started. Accordingly I buy a city guide-book, or hire 
a guide, or at least ascend some height to get my 
bearings, and from time to time inquire my way. In 
other words, true freedom consists in kn wing and 
fulfilling the necessary conditions for the best success. 
This involves dependence on others for information 
and direction, which dependence is not, however, any 
trespass on my rational liberty, since I use the infor¬ 
mation and direction in my own way for my own pur¬ 
poses. The same principle is still more strongly il- 



202 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


lustrated when I freely commit my body to the care 
and control of a physician, in order that I may sooner 
regain the freedom which health gives ; or commit my 
affairs to the care of a legal adviser in those particu¬ 
lars which I do not understand; or submit myself to 
teachers, in order more effectually to gain an educa¬ 
tion. In all these cases, I really make those, to 
whom I apparently submit myself, my ministers to 
aid me in the surer and speedier accomplishment of 
my own purposes. To have those purposes realized 
is the essence of real freedom. To fail of realizing 
them is real loss of freedom. 

If, then, my purpose is to secure my highest well¬ 
being, through the best well doing; and if, being but 
finite, I know not the end from the beginning, nor the 
best, or, perchance, only true way to reach that end, 
my true freedom consists in following, without hin¬ 
drance from my own or other’s self-will and unwisdom, 
the instructions of One, who, knowing my whole being 
and best possible destiny, tells me how to realize 
that destiny, saying: “This is the way, walk ye in it.” 
To possess the privilege of having the way pointed 
out is as much a part of my freedom as is my free 
walking in it. To choose my own way of my own 
will, not knowing where it will lead me, or whether I 
shall or can return from it if I find that it has misled 
me, is the counterfeit of true freedom, though blind 
self-will may accept it as genuine. 

Christ, and his Church in which he dwells as his 
Body, and which is guided by his Spirit, and is his 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE . 


203 


school for heaven, have secured to us a day, which 
is a gracious help to every good end ; a day of the 
purest home delights around the family table, the 
family fireside, and the family bible ; a day of sweet¬ 
ness and light, when the sun can be seen, a purer air 
breathed, and the most of cleanliness and comeliness 
of person and surroundings enjoyed; a day when labor 
is both forgotten and yet best prepared for by rest 
for body and soul; a day, an honest trial of whose 
lower benefits, even, should elevate us by begetting a 
growing loyalty to it, and thence the ennobling idea 
of loyalty to all that is good; a day on which, by ex¬ 
perience of the highest order of freedom, we learn to 
know and distinguish true freedom from the false, and 
to choose and prize the former in all things. 

Home and the Lord’s Day. 

The close connection between a happy and lasting 
home and a well-loved and well-kept Lord’s Day has 
been many times taken for granted in the remarks 
made on the several topics of the last section. Little 
need, therefore, be added here on this most important 
point. Home life is nowhere purer and sweeter than 
in the Scandinavian countries. The Lord’s Day is 
also nowhere more universally respected, loved, and 
observed than there. Boat loads of family parties 
come across their grand fiords, or beautiful lakes, to 
the churches. And, generally, easily accessible sta¬ 
tistics, or descriptions of various nations, show that, 
in proportion as the day is honored with an intelli- 



204 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


gent devotion, are home and woman held sacred. 
See, also, in our own country, now under terrible 
stress and strain from ungodly gain and pleasure seek¬ 
ing, neglect of the Lord’s Day, and weakening of de¬ 
votion to home go hand in hand. Those who, having 
given hands and hearts to each other, are of one heart 
and one mind with regard to the eternal and holy 
things, the knowledge and love of which the Lord’s 
Day was meant to keep alive, are divinely knit togeth¬ 
er in bonds which no merely earthly power can sunder. 
But those whose affections are only earthly fancies or 
passions have, in the comparison, but small ground 
of hope for enduring love, or for a pure, sweet, and 
holy home life. 

The Lord’s Day and Long Life. 

We may, perhaps, most fitly close this summary 
of the moral, mental, and physical benefits of the 
Lord’s Day, by pointing to the principle that any rec¬ 
ommended course of action or system of life may 
well be adopted, when it is found to work best in the 
case of those who are the most prominent advocates 
and illustrations of it. Accordingly, statistics like 
the following, and which are not unfrequently met 
with, are interesting and valuable: The average age 
of 151 ministers, in or from Vermont, who have died 
within the last ten years, was nearly seventy-one 
years; though many of them received salaries not ex¬ 
ceeding four hundred dollars.* Truly one may say, 

* The Congregationalist, June 19, 1890. 



RELA TIOW TO MAW AWE WA TURE. 205 


“Godliness, with contentment, is great gain”; and, 
“ A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth.” Also, if lives wholly 
devoted to the preservation and spread of righteous¬ 
ness are so blest, how can it be otherwise than highly 
beneficial to all, to give one day in seven to a com¬ 
plete change of thoughts, scenes, and associations ? 
Just here is the grievous crime of the Sunday news¬ 
paper against human nature, and all for a base love 
of gain, no matter how obtained. For these papers 
are filled with just those topics of business, politics, 
idle gossip, and vain trifles of dress or light amuse¬ 
ment, which the mind and soul most need total rest 
from; or which insult the better capacities of human 
beings, by implying that they are the mere careless 
butterflies of a day, instead of immortal beings, 
capable of heavenward thought, feeling, and effort. 

Sunday can never do for any one the blessed 
work that its Divine Giver meant it to do, and which 
it is capable of doing, unless the universal Divine 
Fatherhood of God, and the universal brotherhood of 
man in Christ, be recognized in the associated wor¬ 
ship of God as the source of every good, and as there¬ 
fore entitled to united obedience, praise, and thanks¬ 
giving. But no one thing, probably, more than the 
Sunday newspaper, more forcibly and injuriously 
draws away human souls from these high and holy 
sentiments and acts, and the great and lasting bene¬ 
fits that flow from them. 

Such being some of the benefits, and such, also, 




20 6 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


some of the enemies of the Lord’s Day, we may next 
well turn to inquire what are, or may be, some of its 
safeguards. 

Protection of Man’s Right to the Lord’s Day. 

This protection can be secured, partly by the in¬ 
telligent action of salary and wage earners of every 
name and kind, who are indeed the ones most inter¬ 
ested; partly through the operation of enlightened 
public opinion, particularly Christian opinion; and 
then by the co-operation with both, of suitable legal 
enactments. 

It would seem to be evident, that such a Lord’s 
Day rest as we have earnestly striven to describe and 
commend as it deserves to be, is both a duty and a 
right. It is both, because it is a powerful agency for 
good, as we trust has now been reasonably and suffi¬ 
ciently shown. As the free use of the day for his 
best welfare is every man’s right, he is entitled to 
protection in the possession and enjoyment of it; and 
if the moral influence of the prevailing sentiment of 
society, or the law of custom, be not sufficient to re¬ 
strain the selfishness of a gain-getting, or of a self¬ 
ishly and unscrupulously pleasure-seeking class, the 
power of society must interfere by the law of compul¬ 
sion, to secure to each and to all the day of rest and 
freedom, of relaxation and exaltation, for their entire 
being. 

In other words, with reference to the delicate 
question of legal support for the Lord’s Day, on 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


20 7 


which there is not unnaturally much sensitive jeal¬ 
ousy, the fundamental principle seems to be this: 
There is a plain distinction to be observed between 
the duties of man to God, and the duties of man to 
man. No man should think to compel another man 
to perform his duty to God. But man, existing as 
organized society, may exert the influence of society 
(which rightfully exists to secure the rights of each 
by the united power of all), to compel the performance 
of those duties of man to man which concern his 
earthly welfare. 

We have already shown that man, by the constitu¬ 
tion of his being, can not work to the best advantage 
without days of rest and freedom as well as nights of 
sleep. Hence it is no surprise to find, what large 
statistics show, that he can do, in the long run, as 
much in six days per week as in seven.* 

The bearing of this last well-ascertained fact upon 
the total welfare of every workingman, is too impor¬ 
tant to be passed without an effort to make it clear to 
every one. 

The world is even now sometimes so over-supplied 
with the products of its six days’ industry, as to find 
difficulty in consuming them. Then, if seven days’ 
industry produced more, the increased difficulty of 
finding a market for the additional production would 
depress prices, and hence wages. But it would more 
likely be the case, that bodily weariness and mental 

*Gilfillan, “The Sabbath.” Sabbath Documents: Waffle, 
« The Lord’s Day”; W. F. Crafts, “ The Sabbath for Man.” 



208 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


listlessness, occasioned by unrelieved toil, would per¬ 
mit no greater production in seven days than now 
results from six days’ labor. The producers would 
therefore be entitled to no greater compensation than 
they now receive, while they would lose all the pleas 
ure and benefit, to body and soul, of the present Sun¬ 
day freedom, and would inevitably deteriorate in every 
respect. 

While, therefore, no properly balanced Sunday laws 
should or do seek to enforce any, or any form of, re¬ 
ligious or otherwise restful observance of the Day, 
they do and should guarantee an undisturbed oppor¬ 
tunity for it, and prevent the destruction of such oppor¬ 
tunity. Such Sunday laws are among the best friends 
of Labor. Only blind infatuation or prejudice would 
wish to abolish them. Their enemies are either, 
first, they who, on all other days as well, are the 
enemies of thrift, sobriety, and virtue, such as the 
keepers of dens of vice, and the providers of vicious 
pleasures; or they are the selfish managers of cor¬ 
porations, which show that they have no souls, by 
their greediness for gain, at any sacrifice of the best 
welfare of their employees; or, lastly, they are those 
whom foreign oppression and superstition have partly 
maddened and partly blinded into wild fanaticism, 
which, with no clear idea of any thing practicable that 
it wants, only seeks to destroy whatever is. 

Many in the name of liberty, falsely so called, have 
unhappily been beguiled into losing many Lord’s 
Days, with all their abundant blessings. When such 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE . 


209 


wake up to a sense of their loss, they will find that they 
have been entrapped by those who take advantage, 
either of the passions, or the necessities, of their breth¬ 
ren, to impose much hard labor and bondage upon 
those, who, if they saw clearly, would feel keenly that 
they were being deprived of the sacred right to the 
complete periodical rest of their whole being, which 
the Lord’s Day would give them. 

Accordingly, there must not only be a rest day of 
some sort, as shown by the study of man’s constitu¬ 
tion, and of its practical working, but it must be a day 
of God’s making and free gift, and not man’s. For 
who, so well as the Creator, can know how to per¬ 
fectly adapt the day to the needs of the creature ? 
From the toil, noise, disquiet, waste of strength and 
means, of the “continental Sunday,” or, still more, 
from the presumptuous and short-lived tenth-day 
holiday of the French Revolution, the divine voice 
may well say, as it does of all of man’s other toilsome 
and unsatisfying substitutes for God’s provisions, 
“Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for my 
yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” 

A merely man-made Sunday of vagrancy, idle or 
toilsome pleasure, and entire spiritual inaction, is 
scarcely if at all better than one in which the labors 
of the week go on without change. Therefore, while 
law may not undertake to compel to do right, or keep 
Sunday in a prescribed manner, it may respect the 
rights of each and all, and may make a Sunday of rest 
and quiet and worship possible to all alike. 



210 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


At this point, recent testimony of intelligent wit¬ 
nesses of a typical German Sunday is highly valuable 
by way of illustration.* In Eisenach—historically 
famous as the place where Luther spent his boyhood 
—the lofty and capacious old church, provided with 
four galleries to accommodate the thronging gospel 
hearers who once filled them, contained, on a bright 
summer Sunday morning, a congregation of only one 
hundred and forty-five, mostly women, while, in the 
afternoon, sixty-seven women and only five men made 
up the whole attendance. But after the morning 
service, the town fairly emptied itself into the pleasure 
resorts surrounding it, and the merry crowd were re¬ 
turning, at all hours from nightfall until three o’clock 
the next morning. Says the observer : “No wonder 
Monday in Germany is called ‘blue Monday.’ No won¬ 
der it is a common complaint among all the employers 
that nothing can be done by their workmen on Mon¬ 
day.” There must be a day of rest from the toils of 
such a man-made Sunday. And again, at a week-long 
celebration of the 500th anniversary of the founding of 
Heidelberg University, the wildest carnival of all, 
where mirth and jollity and feasting continued day and 
night, was on the closing Sunday. We appeal to 
workingmen, everywhere and chiefly, to answer the 
question, Would such doings be, in sober truth, a 
desirable importation into these United States? 

After what has now been said, it seems clear that 


The Congregationalist , Sept. 9 and 30, 1886. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


211 


every lover of the equal right of all to a weekly day 
of rest and freedom must rejoice at the sight of in¬ 
telligent working people perceiving and claiming this 
precious right, as they are beginning to do. For ex¬ 
ample, early in the year 1886 some twelve hundred 
barbers in Boston successfully petitioned for an en¬ 
forcement of the statute requiring the Sunday sus¬ 
pension of all unnecessary gainful pursuits. 

A few years earlier, a Christian railroad conductor 
described, in an earnest article, a religious meeting of 
railroad employes, led by a locomotive engineer, and 
representing several important railways. He says: 
“ All the prayers but one were by railroad men. Every 
prayer had this burden — ‘that the time may soon 
come when every railroad man can rest from labor 
and enjoy the Sabbath’ and he adds, showing how 
persistently in earnest serious and reflecting working¬ 
men are on this point, “For sixteen years we have 
been studying this problem, How shall the Gospel 
reach the mass of railroad men?” 

Again, and quite recently, we read that “in Phila¬ 
delphia the Carriage Drivers’ and the Undertakers’ 
associations have united in requesting the clergymen 
not to officiate at Sunday funerals.” 

Once more, the following, from two great interior 
representative cities, fairly rounds out typical Ameri¬ 
can testimony, while the movement, begun in 1889, to 
greatly reduce freight movements on our principal 
railroads, can not but be hailed with rejoicing by 
thousands of employes, thus enabled to rest and to 




212 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


know and enjoy their own homes, as well as by all 
lovers of humankind : 

“The friends of Sunday in Chicago are a good deal 
encouraged. At a recent conference between the 
members of committees from union labor associa¬ 
tions, the Barbers’ and Clerks’ associations, and the 
members of the regular Sabbath committee, it was 
decided to recommend an attempt to enforce existing 
laws, and to secure such additional legislation as may 
be required to prevent all labor, except that of neces¬ 
sity and charity. All classes who have the real in¬ 
terests of the community at heart ought to be able to 
unite everywhere against secular and unnecessary 
labor on Sunday.”* 

“Probably there is no city in the United States 
where it is more difficult to enforce Sabbath laws 
than in Cincinnati, owing, principally, to the large 
German population, which, in the main, is in accord 
with American ideas, but on the Sunday question and 
social drinking habits, is a unit in opposition. But a 
further attempt by the municipal authorities to carry 
out the Owen law has resulted not only in closing the 
saloons, against which it was primarily directed, but 
in making the common law against any kind of traffic 
on the Lord’s Day, operative. On Sunday, July 14, 
about sixty thousand persons enjoyed a day of rest, 
who had been accustomed to labor seven days in the 
week, and there is abundant evidence of a strong sen- 


* The Congregationalist , March 10, 1887. 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE. 


213 


timent among the working classes themselves, in 
favor of more stringent laws.” * 

Nor is such significant and hopeful action confined 
to the United States. From England the news 
comesf that “at a crowded meeting of master and 
journeymen bakers in London, a short time ago, a res¬ 
olution protesting against the manufacture of bread 
on Sunday was adopted by* acclamation, and it was 
decided to invoke the aid of the Home Secretary to 
check the growing evil.” 

Once more, a recent visitor to Europe, an Ameri¬ 
can clergyman, says : “ There has been a great im¬ 

provement in Sabbath observance in Germany since 
twenty-five years ago. Business is much less prose¬ 
cuted. ‘ This store closed on Sunday ’ is a very com¬ 
mon placard. The Sunday-closing establishments are 
popular and successful.” J 

Finally, and on a larger scale, and hence more sig¬ 
nificantly and hopefully, the following is reported 
from the recent (1890) Berlin Labor Conference: 
“One of the most interesting results of the conference 
might have surprised even the German Emperor, who 
has taken his place as the royal friend of working 
people. In adopting resolutions for securing one day’s 
rest in seven, the delegates of the conference were 
unanimous. * Their action substantially repeated that 

* The Congregationalist, July 25, 1889. 
f The Churchman , Jan. 8, 1887. 
f The Congregationalist , Dec. 9, 1886. 



214 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


of the International Congress at Paris, held under the 
auspices of the French government, at which forty- 
eight resolutions, all favoring the institution of the 
Sabbath, were passed. Both conferences significantly 
showed English influence upon the question, as well 
as the increasing European sentiment in favor of the 
observance of the Sabbath. The Workingmen’s 
Lord’s Day Rest Association in England has been a 
powerful agent in spreading the desire for the English 
Sabbath, and in combatting the European method of 
secularizing the day. Its thirty-third annual report 
shows that its work has been persistent and untiring. 
Among some of the results of its efforts of the year 
are the closing of English-speaking exhibitions at the 
Paris Exposition, the opening of the British Museum 
on week-day evenings, the relief of Northampton post¬ 
men from Sunday work on every alternate Sunday, 
the recognition by some railroad companies of the 
right of extra pay for Sunday labor, and the influenc¬ 
ing of legislators to oppose Sunday-opening of halls, 
theatres, and museums. The spread of the British 
reverence for the Sabbath will be accompanied with 
distinct gain to European working people, many of 
whom have no knowledge of the benefit of one day’s 
rest in seven.” 

Specimen facts like these indicate a growing intel¬ 
ligent appreciation, in various lands, of Sunday rights 
by working men ; and a clear perception by them of 
the obvious fact that selfish freedom to do without 
restraint whatever one likes on Sunday, means plenty 



RELATION' TO MAN AND NATURE. 


215 


of hard work for somebody else, who is, and should 
know that he is, imposed upon. 

But, besides the proper efforts of working people 
of all kinds, and everywhere, to secure their Sunday 
rights for themselves, Christian public sentiment has 
also its appropriate work to do. There is danger of 
overlooking, through reliance on civil law, even when 
founded on Christianity, the ^^/distinction, however 
imperfectly realized, between the Church and the 
world. The Church is the kingdom of God on earth. 
It has its own laws, written in Gospel and Epistle, 
foremost of which is that of self-sacrifice for others; 
in other words, of stewardship of God’s gifts for the 
benefit of others ; as it is written, “As every man hath 
received the gift, even so minister the same one to 
another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of 
God” (1 Pet. iv : 10). The single word, “manifold,” 
indicates the comprehensiveness of this law, and the 
command to minister as good stewards plainly teaches 
that whoever is in a position to easily avail himself of 
the benefit of any gift of God, is, by that very fact, 
bound to assist others who are less favorably situat¬ 
ed, to share that benefit more abundantly. Some¬ 
thing is very wrong when every employe of every 
Christian can not, as a general rule, find Sunday a day 
of rest and church privileges. No Sunday riding, either 
to church or elsewhere, should be allowed to needless¬ 
ly hinder others from enjoying their Lord’s Day rest. 
Men and women, alike, should be honorably proud of 
the bodily ability, easily had and kept, to walk to 



216 


THE SUNDA V QUESTION. 


church, dressed according to the weather, and with 
refined simplicity, rather than vain of the ability to 
afford to ride there. 

All such Sunday feasting should be cheerfully given 
up, as compels the absence from church, or the 
toilsome labor, of those who prepare it; or such as 
makes the day more of a carnal than a spiritual festi¬ 
val. 

Especially should Christians engage in, and en¬ 
courage, only such Sunday reading as is unquestion¬ 
ably suitable to the day. The abundance of such read¬ 
ing in books and religious family newspapers, to say no¬ 
thing of the blessedness of united family reading and 
profitable discussion, with helps, of suitable Bible se¬ 
lections, leaves no excuse for the introduction of the 
flood of debasing worldliness brought in by the Sun¬ 
day newspapers. And when we add a thought of the 
needless labor involved in their production and dis¬ 
tribution, and the unseemly disquiet occasioned by 
their vociferous sale in the otherwise holy peace of 
Sunday mornings, it would seem among the most in¬ 
credible of all things that any thinking Christian peo¬ 
ple could have any thing to do with them, or be other¬ 
wise than, to a man, a unit against them. 

Finally, there should be such number, kinds, and 
times of church services that every one can attend 
some of them. Nor should any thing be permitted 
to foster mutually narrowing, belittling, and embitter¬ 
ing, and hence thoroughly unchristian, caste distinc¬ 
tions, “One is your Master, and all ye are breth- 



RELATION- TO MAN AND NATURE. 


2iy 


ren,” should be the motto, not painted on the wall, 
but living in the heart, of every Christian society. 

That intelligent and morally courageous Christian 
public sentiment can effect great good, is seen in the 
recently reported facts* of the abolition of the Sun¬ 
day edition of a daily paper in a central New York 
city, and of the Sunday excursions of a prominent 
New England steamboat company. 

On this important topic, a self-denial by Christians 
for others’ sake, so willing as to cease to be self-de¬ 
nial, the present Archbishop Benson of Canterbury 
right nobly and plainly says, in a pastoral address: 
“At a time when it seems that it ought presently to 
grow easier, and not harder, to provide larger means 
of rest and refreshment upon Sundays for the poorer 
people, and yet to avoid crushing under to the very 
earth the already most overburdened classes — viz., 
the men engaged in the small passenger transport, 
and in catering for their immediate supplies—it is 
not inappropriate that the laity and clergy of a re¬ 
ligious conference should set well before them the 
determination at least not to make an extension of 
opportunity to the poor into an excuse for grasp¬ 
ing at fresh license for ourselves ... at the 
cost of fresh labors for our own servants and of other 
poorer persons. ‘That thy servant may rest, as 
well as thou,’ is the essence of the moral command. 
, . . This is no time for religious homes to be- 


* The Congregationalist, June 19, 1890. 



218 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


gin to be careless of the religious habits we inherit, 
of the daily services of our churches, of the prayers 
in the family, of the blessing of meals, of the reading 
of God’s Word to the household, of catechising the 
children, of home preparation for confirmations and 
communions, of the sober guidance of dependents 
towards thrift and other habits, which are rather 
easier now than harder.” 

Again: A writer already quoted (see page 213) 
states that at a German conference of Lutheran 
churches, held in the autumn of 1886, “an exhaust¬ 
ive paper was read by a distinguished jurist, on Sun¬ 
day laws, ancient and modern. The author claimed 
that legislation for the protection of workingmen, and 
for the enforcement of quiet on the Lord’s Day, was 
legitimate, useful, and absolutely necessary. A reso¬ 
lution, calling upon the Imperial Parliament to enact 
and enforce such laws, was thoroughly discussed and 
unanimously adopted.” 

But, finally, the grandest sanction for laws protect¬ 
ive of Sunday rest is found, not in the claims of labor 
or the dictates of philanthropy, proper as these are, 
but in the sublimely simple record of man’s creation. 
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. ii: y). 
“Of the dust of the earth,” as having a material 
body, and as hence fitted for bodily labor, and re¬ 
quiring it daily, in some form, for his best estate; 
yet neither a mere working animal, such as slavery 



RELATION TO MAN AND NATURE . 


219 


would make him, nor a machine, as capital, abused by 
a selfish application of it, would too much make him, 
but “a living soul,” lifting him above the condition 
of being either a mere animal or a machine. Then 
to this living soul the same Lord God, first, by his 
own example (Gen. ii : 2, 3), and then to one chosen 
race by precept (Ex. xx), and then, again, and more 
impressively than ever, by a miracle of operation (Luke 
xxiv: 1-6), as witness to a miracle of love (Rom. v : 
6-8), gave a day of sacred freedom, that in it he 
might take thought that he was a living soul, of di¬ 
vine, as well as earthly, origin. And this keepsake 
of man’s heavenly birth was made to recur so often, 
that man might easily keep a perpetual memory of 
his divine parentage, and so, while a creature of earth, 
live also the proper life of a child of God. 

Thus the possession of the Lord’s Day is man’s 
heavenly birthright, of which none ever may rightfully 
deprive him ; while his cherished observance of the 
day is his privilege, his wisdom, his necessity, his 
tribute of intelligent and grateful appreciation of his 
Creator’s provision for his welfare, and hence his per¬ 
petual obligation. 



220 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE LORD’S DAY; AND THE SABBATH IN 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

T HE foregoing chapters contain essentially the com¬ 
plete Christian argument for the Lord’s Day, in 
its three main divisions: the New Testament argu¬ 
ment ; the argument from the practice of the Church, 
and the argument from Nature,— not Nature, however, 
as seen by the heathen, but as illumined by Chris¬ 
tianity. 

To us, this complete Christian argument seems 
entirely sufficient, as a guide to Christian faith and 
practice regarding the Lord’s Day. That is, it does 
not seem necessary , as said before, to go outside of 
Christianity for authority and reasons for keeping the 
Lord’s Day, or for instruction to teach us sufficiently 
how it should be kept. 

But, seeing how little is said in the New Testa¬ 
ment, alone, about the Day, and that in that little 
there is an absence of express command to keep it, 
some, as noticed already, in leaving the New Testa¬ 
ment in search of additional authority for the observ¬ 
ance, turn one way, and some another. Some look 
forward to learn from the action of the universal 
Christain commonwealth, the Church, the Body of 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 


221 


Christ, acting under the “dispensation of the Spirit,” 
“which proceedeth from the Father,” and which, 
Christ says, “I will send unto you from the Father.” 

Others, instead, turn backward—or seem to do so 
—more heartily and readily than forward, to find in 
the elder dispensations, the additional authority which 
they seek. That this backward search is justifiable 
and not useless, even though not really necessary, 
may appear from a few simple considerations, such as 
the following. 

Though Christianity is a new beginning, in which 
old things have passed away, and all things have be¬ 
come new (2 Cor. v : 17), yet it is not so independent or 
absolute a new beginning that either nothing, or no¬ 
thing having any relation to it, went before it. Judaism 
was preparatory to it, and led up to it. “The law 
was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ ” (Gal. iii: 
24); “Search the Scriptures [the Old Testament books 
were the only Scriptures existing when these words 
were spoken], for they are they which testify of me” 
(John v : 39). What was thus true of Christianity as a 
whole, in relation to the Mosaic Dispensation, was 
doubtless true of its separate elements, whether moral 
or ceremonial. Thus, as before noticed, baptism re¬ 
placed circumcision; the Lord’s Supper replaced the 
Passover; the Sacrifice on Calvary replaced the sacri¬ 
fices in the temple; and, in some sense, we may say 
that the Sermon on the Mount replaced the Law of 
Moses, — not, however, to abolish its moral require¬ 
ments, but to restate them and enforce them by new 




222 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


and more deeply persuasive considerations. The 
wondrous and blessed words of that sermon were not 
spoken from the mount which burned with fire, and 
with terrifying voice (Heb. xii: 18, 19), but from the 
Mount of Beatitude, and with a voice that charmed 
the multitude of astonished listeners (Matt, v : 1). 

Accordingly, we may consider the long-existing 
Sabbath of the Law, both as a pledge that there would, 
in some sort, be a counterpart of it in the Gospel, and 
as some indication of the character of the latter. 

Beginning with the Resurrection as the immediate 
foundation of the Christian Lord’s Day, and the 
Spirit-guided apostolic and primitive practice, ground¬ 
ed on that foundation, as abundant authority for it, 
we have proceeded forward to modern times, and on 
and out into the field of Nature, to find only harmony 
between the Divine indications of the Gospel, and 
those of man’s natural constitution. We have now to 
return to our starting-point, and thence trace back¬ 
ward through the receding ages the forerunners of 
the Lord’s Day, the Old Testament Sabbaths. 

In this backward exploration, we first meet the 
seventh-day Sabbath as it was in the lifetime of 
Christ and his apostles; and his own and their treat¬ 
ment of it. This chapter is accordingly devoted to 
the establishment of the following proposition : 

The Jewish, or seventh-day Sabbath was abolished 
by Christianity , in favor of the Lord’s Day as a more 
than equivalent substitute for it, as is both declared 
and implied in the New Testament, which nowhere 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 223 


mentions it as transferred with a new name to a new 
day of the week. 

In going back of Christianity, we lose the Lord’s 
Day, and meet another day, and another name, for 
the weekly day of sacred rest. The day is the seventh 
day, and its name, the Sabbath, a word meaning rest. 

These names, as may again be said in passing, 
have become party badges, indicative of parties, his¬ 
torically known as the Lord’s Day or Dominical 
party, and the Sabbatarian party, and holding some¬ 
what different opinions concerning both the authority 
for keeping the day, and the manner of keeping it. 
This fact, however, is of less importance than that 
all parties are agreed that the day is a sacred one, 
which should be observed while time shall last. 

It is, however, much to be desired, in behalf of 
thorough Christian unity, such unity as is pictured 
in bold and telling strokes in Eph. iv: 3-6, that these 
parties, and their names as badges of them, might 
cease, so that the strength, now in a manner wasted 
in mutual contention, might be consolidated, but yet 
in a helpful and inviting—not a repellant—manner, 
against those who are losing the blessings of the 
Lord’s Day as a Sabbath, or day of holy rest. 

And since there is a charm in names, it may be 
some contribution to this unity, to suggest, that 
while the Lord’s Day ought not to be so identified 
with the Jewish Sabbath as to call it the Sabbath — 
which, as it seems to us, properly means the Jewish 
day only — yet it is, as a day of rest, a Sabbath. It 



224 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


may, by analogy between corresponding features of 
the Mosaic and the Gospel Dispensations, be called 
the Christian Sabbath, just as spiritual self-discipline 
is called circumcision of the heart (Rom. ii: 29), 
as sincerity and truth are called unleavened bread 
(1 Cor. v: 8), and as Christ himself is called our Pass- 
over (1 Cor. v : 7). So then, as kept in devoutly joy¬ 
ful memory of the gloriously decisive fact of the Res¬ 
urrection, it is the Lord's Day ; as being a day of 
such sacred rest as becomes such joy, it is a Sabbath — 
yet not even then the Christian Sabbath, as if there 
were no other, for, as elsewhere pointed out, the whole 
Christian dispensation is a Sabbath, or rest, from 
the bondage of the Law,—a rest, in Christ, from sin. 

The New Testament Abolition of the Jewish 
Sabbath. 

1. The first general council of the Church, of 
which we have any knowledge, was that of the 
apostles, elders, and brethren, mentioned in Acts 
xv : 23. The one question before them was, whether 
the Gentile converts should be required to keep the 
Law of Moses (vs. 1, 5, 24). The authority of the 
council over the question is stated in v. 28, where a 
claim is unhesitatingly made, which would be pro¬ 
fanely presumptuous in any but inspired apostles. 
These being the circumstances, abstinence from four 
things, which would implicate Christians in heathen 
religion and vice, was commanded, but no part of the 
Law of Moses was required of them. And the Jewish 



THE SABBATH IN’ NEW TESTAMENT. 22$ 


converts were to be charitably indulged in customs 
dear to them both by religious and patriotic associa¬ 
tions. (See Geikie’s Life and Words of Christ.) They 
were reminded that in every city synagogues could 
be found where Moses was read every Sabbath Day. 
The principle is one of pure liberty, so often and 
strongly stated elsewhere. You Gentiles are free 
from the Law of Moses, and ever have been (v. 24). 
And you Jewish Christians can hear Moses in your 
synagogues, wherever you are and whenever you 
wish. But remember that Christianity is a new 
beginning, in and from Christ, who only is to be named 
as its Author and Fountain-head (vs. 7, 11, 26), and 
that it is not a revised or extended Judaism, or an out¬ 
growth of it, and therefore, that while you need not 
feel bound to abruptly abandon all that ages have 
made sacred to you, you are also not to enforce it along 
with Christianity, upon converts to the latter only 
(v. 19). 

The absence of any mention of the Lord’s Day in 
this account is nothing against the authority of that 
Day. For the question was not, what Christian 
ordinances the Gentiles should observe, but what 
Mosaic ones, and heathen practices, they need or 
should not observe. 

2. St. Paul, also, who was prominent in his oppo¬ 
sition to a Judaized Christianity, lays down the prin¬ 
ciples and practical decisions which should perma¬ 
nently settle the question before us, in Col. ii. Be¬ 
ginning with vs. 9, 10, he lays down a comprehensive 



226 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


principle, which includes the distinctively Christian 
beginning of the Lord’s Day as a particular case. 
He says of Christ, “For in Him dwelleth all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete 
in Him , which is the Head of all principality and 
power.” This is explicit, as showing that the Chris¬ 
tian has no occasion to go back of the word and 
deed of Christ and his apostles, for authority for his 
bounden faith and practice as a Christian. The apos¬ 
tle then proceeds to apply the universal principle thus 
laid down, by showing that circumcision is abolished, 
except in a moral sense (v. n, and ch. iii : 2, 5), and 
that “the handwriting of ordinances” is “blotted 
out,” taken “out of the way,” and nailed to the 
cross (v. 14). Then he adds (v. 16), “Let no man 
therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect 
of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sab¬ 
bath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but 
the body [substance] is of Christ.” 

That is, these Jewish sacred days were abolished, 
yet not without leaving to the Christian something 
better as a substitute for them, founded in.the life of 
Christ — his Birth, Resurrection, Ascension, and Gift 
of the Spirit. 

3. Bearing in mind that the grand object of the 
Epistle to the Galatians was to prevent those fickle 
Christians from being perverted from the pure Gos¬ 
pel by Judaizing teachers (chap, i : 6, 7, and v : 1), the 
passage (chap, iv : 9-12), with vs. 24, 31, points to the 
conclusion already reached. “The days, months, 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 227 


times, and seasons,” were not religious days in gen¬ 
eral, but distinctively, and only, Jewish ones, as we 
know from the tenor of the entire epistle, and can 
easily allow from their peculiar appropriateness as 
descriptive of the Jewish Sabbatical festivals; the 
seventh day , the Pentecost, the seventh month , the 
seventh year , and the year of jubilee after seven 
times seven years.* 

Therefore the abolition of the Jewish Sabbath, thus 
made conclusive, in no way weakens the Scripture ar¬ 
gument for the Lord’s Day, or leaves one free to re¬ 
gard the latter as a merely secular day. 

4. To precisely the same effect is the instruction 
in Rom. xiv: 1-6. It is sufficiently evident from 
the known existence of a considerable Jewish popu¬ 
lation in Rome; from the presence, on the day of 
Pentecost, of “strangers from Rome, Jews, and pros¬ 
elytes” (Acts ii : 10); from the scattering of converts 
mentioned in Acts viii : 4, and xi : 19; from the case 
of Aquila and Priscilla (Acts xviii : 2), and of Apollos 
(xviii : 24-28), and from Acts xix : 21 ; from the direct 
address to Gentiles in Rom. i : 13, and xi : 13 ; from 
the apparently personal address to Jews, in chaps, ii, 
iii, and vii; and, in general, from the well-known 
mixture of races in Rome, brought about by com¬ 
merce and government affairs — it is evident enough, 
from all this, that there was a Christian community 
in Rome, of mixed Jew and Gentile composition. 


* Eight Studies of the Lord’s Day, p. 151. 



228 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


This being understood, the remarkable passage be¬ 
fore us, puzzling to the Christian who is ignorant or 
forgetful of the circumstances which called it forth, 
is to be interpreted in harmony with Acts xv:2i, 
and i Cor. viii, and x : 25-33. I n these passages, 
the one thought is charitable consideration for opin¬ 
ions, and sense of obligation on the one hand, or of 
freedom on the other, depending on life-long associa¬ 
tions. Let not him who eats only herbs (Rom. xiv : 2), 
for fear of favoring idolatry by eating what has been 
offered to idols, “set at naught” (v. 10) his brother, 
who believes that he may, without offense, eat any 
thing. Neither let the latter despise the former as 
superstitious. So, also, let those to whom race asso¬ 
ciations have made certain days sacred, keep them 
without annoyance ; but let them not think to enforce 
their observance on those to whom they are like all 
other days. With this view, Stuart, among others, 
clearly agrees, noting Col. ii : 16, and Gal. iv : 10, as 
similar passages. 

The spirit of vs. 4-6 may indeed forbid any men 
to seek to compel any other men to keep the Lord’s 
Day, either at all, or in any particular way; but the 
entire passage, with the similar ones referred to, does 
not deny the obligation of the Lord’s Day, for they 
are all independent of it, being wholly taken up with 
entirely different topics. We find that obligation ex¬ 
pressed or implied in other places where it is the sub¬ 
ject of record or instruction. 

Besides, the great and inspired apostle would not 




THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 22g 


so contradict himself as to give “order” to all the 
churches of Galatia and Achaia (i Cor. xvi : i, 2), 
concerning one particular in the religious observance 
of a generally recognized day, if he meant that Chris¬ 
tianity had, or was meant to have, no special day prin¬ 
cipally for religious purposes. 

5. Numerous guiding analogies. To those who 
love to trace out correspondences between the fea¬ 
tures of the Old Dispensation and their counterparts 
in the New, there will be a charm in perceiving that, 
as baptism is the successor of circumcision; as the 
Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, has replaced the Pass- 
over ; and as the twelve apostles of Christianity have 
succeeded to the twelve patriarchs of Israel; so each 
dispensation had its characteristic sacred mountains, 
of commandment or of beatific vision. On Sinai, with 
its terrors, was the Law given to the Jewish Theoc¬ 
racy ; while the Sermon on the Mount was the law 
of the kingdom of heaven founded by Christ. St. 
Paul, not without allusion to the final consummation, 
also, seems to refer to this, in the contrast between 
Heb. xii : 18-21, and 22-24, and again in that be¬ 
tween Gal. iv : 24, and 26. 

Also, the sacred Mount of Transfiguration seems 
the counterpart of Pisgah, from which Moses gained 
a vision of the Promised Land. On the Mount of 
Transfiguration, it was therefore all the more fitting 
that Moses, the giver, and Elijah, the defender, of the 
Law should appear with Peter, James, and John, in 
the presence of Jesus, whose Gospel at once fulfilled 



230 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


and superseded the Law, by introducing something 
better, both in ideal and motive ' and that the apos¬ 
tles, representatives of the New, should remain, while 
Moses and Elijah as representatives of the Law should 
vanish, as if in testimony that “ that which decayeth 
andwaxethold is ready to vanish away” (Heb*. viii: 13). 
St. Peter alludes to this scene in 2 Pet. 1 : 16-18; 
and St. John, apparently, in John i : 14. 

It is, accordingly, only natural, as being in entire 
harmony with these striking correspondences, to affirm 
that the Christian Lord’s Day was the clearly indi¬ 
cated successor of the Jewish seventh-day, or Sab¬ 
bath, and superseded it. 

Analogy, as all are well aware, is not proof, but it 
affords ground for probability; and we have to act, in 
all other things, oftener on probabilities than on cer¬ 
tainties. Hence, with so many other analogies as 
exist between the Old and the New Dispensations, 
we should expect to find a holy day in the New, fore¬ 
shadowed by that in the Old. Therefore, until the 
contrary is proved, we may claim that the Lord’s Day, 
the memorial of the new creation by Redemption, is 
that day ; as the Old Testament Sabbath was the de¬ 
clared memorial of the original creation. 

It is, however, of the utmost importance to declare 
again, explicitly, at this point, that in speaking of the 
Jewish Sabbath as abolished, and replaced by the 
Christian Lord’s Day, neither it nor the Old Testa¬ 
ment generally, is disparaged nor dishonored. Nor 
is there the least intention of setting up the New 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 23 1 


Testament as the rival of the Old, or in opposition to 
it. It is one thing for a system to have had its day 
and have served its purpose ; and it is quite another 
thing to say that it has been tried and been found 
wanting for the purpose for which it was intended. 
Indeed, speaking broadly, it is not the Jewish Sab¬ 
bath, only, that can be properly considered in this con¬ 
nection, but the Mosaic Dispensation as a whole, 
which stands or falls as a whole, including its Sabbath 
as one of its constituent parts. 

The Mosaic Sabbath in the New Testament. 

We now come to another branch of the general 
proposition of this chapter, which is, that the fre¬ 
quent mention of the Jewish Sabbath in the New 
Testament is not such as to make its observance 
binding upon Christians. 

The many references to the Sabbath, as distin¬ 
guished from the Lord’s Day, in the New Testament, 
may be grouped under five heads, thus : — 

1. Passages showing Christ’s Lordship over the 
Day, involving authoritative decisions as to its object 
and uses, and implying abundant authority for re¬ 
placing it by any substitute, better suited to the New 
Dispensation founded by him. Such passages are : 
“For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath 
day” (Matt, xii: 8; Luke vi: 5), read in connection 
with the context, particularly in Matt. v. 6; “Where¬ 
fore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days” 
(Matt, xii: 12 ; Mark iii: 4); “The Sabbath was made 



232 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION . 


for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” etc. (Mark 
ii : 27, 28); “ My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work,” etc. (John v : 1-23), showing that, as the Father 
has existed to uphold and bless the creation which 
he made, so Jesus does the same, and with like 
power (v. 21, and Heb. 1 : 3) and like claim to honor 
(v- 23). 

2. Passages indicating that Jesus and his apostles 
availed themselves of the Sabbath and synagogue 
services as existing institutions for purposes of in¬ 
struction, while Jesus, as a Jew according to the flesh, 
also fulfilled the Law by thus showing respect to the 
Day. 

Thus we read, “ And when he was come into his own 
country, he taught them in their synagogue ” (Matt, 
xiii: 54), which was on the Sabbath (Mark vi: 1, 2), 
and was his usual practice (Luke iv: 16, 31, vi: 6, 
xiii : 10; John vi: 59). Also, we read of the apostles, 
that they “went into the synagogue on the Sabbath 
day and sat down,” etc. (Acts xiii : 14-16, 42-44). 
And at Thessalonica, “ Paul, as his manner was , went 
in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with 
them out of the Scriptures” (Acts xvii: 1, 2). See, 
also, Acts xviii : 4. 

3. Other passages teach that, in obedience to his 
own law of the Sabbath, made by him as its Lord, he 
freely practised, himself, and allowed others to prac 
tise,'works of necessity and mercy (Matt, xii: 1-12 ; 
Mark ii : 23, 24, iii : 2-5 ; Luke xiii: 10-17, xiv : 1-6 ; 
John v : 10, 11, vii: 23, ix : 14); incidentally involving 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 233 


innocent recreation (Mark ii: 23, iii : 7) and hospi¬ 
tality (Luke xiv: 1 ). 

The merciful daily care (Luke xiii: 15) and the 
merciful rescue (Matt, xii: 11) of the domestic ani¬ 
mals are approved as teaching that, much more, are 
deeds of mercy to be done with alacrity for the bodies 
and souls of men - for, “how much, then, is a man 
better than a sheep? ” (Matt, xii: 12.) 

Agreeably with the decision implied in this ques¬ 
tion, Jesus wrought several of his most wonderful 
miracles on the Sabbath Day. On that day he healed 
the man with the withered hand (Matt, xii: 10), the 
demoniac at Capernaum (Luke iv: 33), the mother 
of Peter’s wife (Luke iv: 31, 38), the afflicted and 
bowed down daughter of Abraham (Luke xiii : 16), 
the man sick with the dropsy who was in the Phar¬ 
isee’s house (Luke xiv : 1), the long-suffering cripple 
at the pool of Bethsaida (John v : 8-10), and him that 
was born blind (John ix : 14). All these, and perhaps 
other mighty works, Jesus did on the Sabbath, as if 
in illustration of the work of divine care and* blessing 
which he and his Father did (John v : 17), and the joy 
of which was the divine rest. 

Moreover, not only did Jesus perform such works 
as appropriate to the Sabbath whose Lord he was, 
but he expressly declared that he came to do them, 
and others yet more blessed, because wrought in and 
for troubled hearts as well as troubled bodies. In 
the synagogue at Nazareth he said, applying to him¬ 
self the words of Isaiah lxi: 1, 2 : “The Spirit of the 



234 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to 
preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to 
heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the 
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set 
at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the 
acceptable year of the Lord . . . [and he added], 

This day is this ScrijDture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 
iv : 18, 19, 21). 

4. Some of these, and other passages, also contain 
the strongest condemnation of merely ceremonial 
and traditional strictness. 

To apprehend these properly, we should under¬ 
stand something of the almost incredible refinement 
to which the Rabbis had carried their numberless and 
encumbering comments on all parts of the original 
Mosaic Law. Says the Mischna, as quoted by Geikie: * 
“ It is a greater offense to teach any thing contrary to 
the voice of the Rabbis, than to contradict Scripture 
itself.” And again : “The Bible was like water, the 
traditions like wine, the commentaries on them like 
spiced wine.” “My son, give more heed to the 
words of the Rabbis than to the words of the Law,” 
with much more to the same effect, on which Geikie 
makes this appropriate comment, “ So exactly alike 
is Ultramontanism in every age, and in all religions.” 

Such being the principles of Rabbinism, take the 
following as specimens of some of the rulings under 
them : No healing is permitted on the Sabbath, ex- 


*“ Life and Words of Christ.’ 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 235 


cept when life is in danger. Lengthened rules were 
prescribed as to the kinds of knots which might 
legally be tied or untied on the Sabbath. The 
camel-driver’s and the sailor’s knots were unlawful, 
but the one that could be untied with one hand 
might be undone. To write so much as two letters 
of the alphabet, if written where they would be per¬ 
manent, was to break the Sabbath, but they might 
lawfully be written on sand, or on a fluid. No greater 
bulk of food than a dried fig could be transported on 
the Sabbath. Walking on grass was forbidden labor, 
because it was of the nature of threshing. Thus the 
precise sin of the disciples in gathering the ears of 
corn and rubbing them in their hands (Luke vi : 1) 
was, that they thus reaped and threshed on the Sab¬ 
bath. An egg laid on the Sabbath must not be 
eaten, not even looked at, lest it should make one 
wish to eat it. Such rules were numbered literally 
by thousands, respecting Sabbath-keeping, offerings, 
washings, etc., requiring the anxious labor of a life¬ 
time to learn them, and, when written, filling a series 
of huge folio volumes. 

To all this, as well as to other burdens, Jesus op¬ 
posed the invitation, “ Come unto me, and I will give 
you rest,”—rest from this burden of endless and un¬ 
meaning rites, with which ye are heavy-laden. “The 
Sabbath was made for man”; “ It is lawful to do well 
on the Sabbath days”; “I will have mercy, and not 
sacrifice”; “ How much, then, is a man better than 
a sheep?” “Not that which goeth into the mouth 



236 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


defileth a man; . . . but those things which pro¬ 

ceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, 
and they defile the man; . . . but to eat with 

unwashen hands defileth not a man” (Matt. xv:n, 
18, 20). 

And as it was considered by the pedantic Rabbis 
of the time of Christ nothing less than impious to 
be original, in varying in the least from their ancient 
traditions, he thus excited the utmost astonishment, 
as one who “spake with authority, and not as the 
Scribes.” Moreover, as the simple but sound saying 
that 

“ Satan finds some mischief still 
For idle hands to do,” 

applies to the mind, as well as to the hands, the in¬ 
finity of nothings on which the Rabbis and Pharisees 
wasted their lives were the mischief found for them 
to do. But the ordinary people, too busy with the 
honest and useful daily industries of life to make it 
possible for them to observe the endless prescriptions 
of the Rabbinical caste, were far more unperverted 
in their natures, and thus it was that “ all the people 
glorified God for all the mighty works which they 
had seen,” and that “the common people heard him 
gladly.” 

With the apprehension now gained of the true 
state of things against which the whole life of Jesus 
was a protest, we can still better appreciate the vari¬ 
ous passages already referred to. In Matt, xii: 7, 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 237 


Christ tells the fault-finding Pharisees that his dis¬ 
ciples were “guiltless” in plucking and eating the 
ears of corn to satisfy their hunger on the Sabbath. 
In xii : 11, 13, we read how, after making an un¬ 
answerable reply to their attempted accusation of 
Sabbath-breaking by a work of healing, he healed the 
man with a withered hand. Again, St. Luke (xiii : 
11-17) tells us of his healing the woman bowed down 
with infirmity, and of his sharp rebuke of the ruler 
of the synagogue for his perversity in preferring the 
claims of an ox or an ass to those of a fellow-child 
of Abraham. Also, in St. John v: 8, 9, 21, we read 
of the cure of the paralytic on the Sabbath, and of 
Christ’s uncompromising defense of his act, on the 
exalted ground of his supreme lordship over life. 

5. Other passages, as Acts xv:2i and Romans 
xiv : 6, appear to indicate an indulging of Jewish con¬ 
verts in continuing to observe their Sabbath, as the 
action recorded in Acts xvi : 3 and xxi : 26 does in 
other particulars—a point already noticed. 

In reviewing these passages, two points appear: 
Not only, first, did Jesus avail himself of the Jewish 
Sabbath as an existing institution convenient for pur¬ 
poses of instruction, but second, as a Jew, according 
to the flesh, he, while preparing the foundations of 
his new Kingdom, fulfilled the whole Jewish law, polit¬ 
ical, moral, and ceremonial, by conforming to it. This 
he did in obeying the law of circumcision (Luke 
ii : 21); of attendance at the national feasts (Luke ii : 
42 ; John ii: 13, 23, vii : 2, 10, 14, 3 7 > xii : L 12); and 



238 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


of recognition of the authorized teachers and heads 
(Matt, xxiii : i, 3 ; John xviii: 19, 23); as well as of sub¬ 
stantial righteousness (Matt, v : 20; Luke xi : 39). 

Moreover, as the Sabbath, like other features of the 
Old Dispensation, was a shadow of better and more 
real things to come (Col. ii: 17; Heb. x : 1), Christ, 
as Lord of the Sabbath, would naturally indicate, by 
his own manner of using it, something of the charac¬ 
ter which he intended to impress, or left his Churchy 
guided by his Spirit , free to impress upon his own 
glorious memorial day. Thus we find in the vanish¬ 
ing Sabbaths, as marked by his words and deeds, fore¬ 
tastes of the heavenly joy in well-doing with which 
he would fill and glorify his own day in his New 
Kingdom. 

It has been earnestly contended that, because Jesus 
thus purified and restored the Sabbath, he meant to 
preserve it. This is not quite correct, when one 
comes to speak exaetly. The fact that during his 
three years’ public ministry, previous to his Resurrec¬ 
tion, he purified the Sabbath, as then existing, from 
its defilements, and restored it by removing its deface¬ 
ments, is to be interpreted in harmony with the fact 
that the Mosaic institutions generally were types of 
the Christian ones. 

With the acknowledged fact just stated as a guide, 
we can truly say, firsty that the honor shown by Christ 
to the Jewish Sabbath, during his public ministry, 
was a further pledge that the Christian Dispensation, 
which he came to inaugurate, would not be left with- 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT 239 


out a holy day of its own ; an d second, that his restora¬ 
tion of the perverted Sabbath to its original purity 
and holy beneficence, was a preliminary making the 
type worthy of its intended fulfilment , and thus a 
pledge of the glorious beauty and excellence of the 
permanent day which he, by and at his Resurrection, 
would give to Christianity, or, better, to his Church. 

In addition to all that has already been said about 
the Lord’s Day as a new beginning, as the distinctive 
holy day of Christianity, and as quite independent of 
the Jewish “ Sabbath,” a further explanation of this 
independence may be found in the differing typical 
characters of the two days. 

In Exodus xxxi : 13, 17, we read that the Sabbaths 
were “a sign between me and you throughout your 
generations”—“the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord ” 
— “perpetual covenant ”—“a sign between me and 
the children of Israel forever; for in six days the 
Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day 
he rested and was refreshed.” And in Exodus xx : 2, 
we read as the significant preface to the Ten Com¬ 
mandments, “I am the Lord thy God, which have 
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house 
of bondage.” And in Leviticus xxv : 38, “I am the 
Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the 
land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and 
to be your God ” (Ex. xx : 3). And in Exodus xxiii: 
12, that “on the seventh day thou shalt rest; that 
thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thine 
handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.” 



240 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


These passages represent the Jewish Sabbath as, 
primarily, a-type of the rest in the land of Canaan, 
after the toils and sufferings of the people in the land 
of Egypt, though it is also, as shown in Chapter III, a 
type of the Lord’s Day. It was commended to them 
by the example of God, who represents himself, in 
human speech to human comprehension, as resting 
and being refreshed after completing the work of cre¬ 
ation. Hence the day chosen was well the seventh, 
coming after the six days of earthly labor. 

On the contrary, Christ is variously represented as 
being and making a new beginning. 

1. John the Baptist came, providentially, to prepare 
the way for Christ; of himself, to reform, purify, and 
spiritualize the dead ceremonialism into which Juda¬ 
ism in his day had fallen.* But in Matt, ix : 14-17, 
Jesus teaches the disciples of John, with other hear¬ 
ers, that John’s attempt is like sewing new cloth 
on to an old garment. The new covenant must be 
new throughout, both inwardly and outwardly, in its 
framework of externals, as well as in its spirit. 

2. This new spirit is revealed in such passages 

as Matt, v : 38-48, against revenge and hatred of 
enemies, and in the words, “A new commandment 
I give unto you, That ye love one another . . . 

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, 
if ye have love one to another” (John xiii : 34, 35). 
Also, “ the first man, Adam, was made a living soul; 

* Geikie, “ Life and Words of Christ.” 



THE SABBATH IN NEW TESTAMENT. 241 


the last Adam was made a quickening [life-giving] 
spirit” (1 Cor. xv:45). 

3. In externals there was also a new beginning as 
testified in Heb. vii: 12,14 : “ Forth zpriesthood being 
changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the 
law. For he of whom these things are spoken per- 
taineth to another tribe, of which no man gave at¬ 
tendance at the altar. For it is evident that our 
Lord sprang out of Juda ; of which tribe Moses spake 
nothing concerning priesthood”; “He [Jesus] is the 
mediator of a better covenant ” (Heb. viii : 6); “The 
mediator of the New Testament” (Heb. ix : 15); “A 
new and living way ” (Heb. x : 20). 

It is therefore only most obviously appropriate, that, 
when all else in Christianity was a new beginning, its 
distinctive holy day should be new,—new in its origin; 
new in its grounds and manner of observance; and, 
as typical of this, new in its place in the week: the 
■first, as representative of the beginning of the new ; 
no longer the last, as representative of the ending of 
the old. 

Bishop Jeremy Taylor,* a wise and holy man, has 
some remarks on this subject, so striking that we 
quote them as an appropriate ending of this chapter. 
“The primitive Church kept, both the Sabbath and 
the Lord’s Day till the time of the Laodicean Council 
(about A. D. 300), . . . and therefore did not 

esteem the Lord’s Day to be substituted in the place 


* Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., II: 12. 




242 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


of the obliterated Sabbath, but a feast celebrated by 
great reason and perpetual consent, without precept 
or necessary Divine injunction. But the liberty of 
the Church was great; they found themselves set free 
from that strict and necessary rest which was one 
great part of the Sabbatic rites; only they were glad 
of the occasion to meet often for offices of religion, 
and the day served well for the gaining and facili¬ 
tating the conversion of the Jews, and for the honor¬ 
able sepulture of the synagogue, it being kept so long, 
like the forty-days’ mourning of Israel for the death 
of their father, Jacob.” 

Thus the elder institution, though (Heb. viii : 13) 
evidently and badly “decayed” as to its condition in 
the time of Christ, and “ ready to vanish,” did not 
immediately vanish, but faded gradually before the 
advancing Lord’s Day, as night fades before the 
rising sun. 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


243 


CHAPTER X. 

THE LORD'S DAY, AND THE FOURTH 
COMMANDMENT. 


I T is well known that there are various opinions in 
the Christian world concerning the relation of the 
Old Testament to the New, of the Law to the Gos- 
pel, of Judaism to Christianity. This has appeared 
incidentally in previous chapters. 

It is a question whether the abolition of the Law 
by the Gospel, as declared in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, and elsewhere, refers to the Levitical law 
of rites and ceremonies only, or to the whole Mosaic 
Law, including the letter, but not the spirit, of the 
Ten Commandments. 

It is a question, in other words, whether the Ten 
Commandments were given to the Jews, or to man¬ 
kind; to the Jews for themselves, or as representa¬ 
tives of the human race, or, so to say, in trust for 
mankind. 

But these questions are not so startling as they might 
at first appear to some; for, in raising them, no one 
for a moment supposes that any moral duty ever 
ceases to be obligatory ; or that idolatry, profanity, 





244 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


murder, lust, theft, or lying, are ever otherwise than 
wrong and forbidden, or that holy love to God and 
man, with all the duties due to both, growing out of 
such love, are ever, or anywhere, otherwise than right 
and commanded. The most that is meant is, that the 
immediate ground for the Christian performance of 
these duties is the word and deed of Christ and his 
apostles. 

If, for example, the college student is informed that 
the rules of deportment at the academy have ceased to 
exist for him, it is not meant that he is left with no 
guide for his conduct, or instruction as to what is ex¬ 
pected of him, or that anarchy is proclaimed or ap¬ 
proved for either academy or college; but only that 
the immediate ground of his good deportment as a col¬ 
legian is loyalty to the rules of his college. 

Whatever speculative differences may exist, the 
following important practical points remain undis¬ 
turbed. 

1. The abolition of the Law does not mean the 
abolition of any moral duty prescribed by it, but only 
a change in the immediate ground for its perform¬ 
ance.* 

2. Judaism is not foreign to, or independent of, 
Christianity in any such sense as the various forms of 
paganism are; but is the forerunner of it, the prepara¬ 
tion for it, and the God-given religion of the chosen 
people, of whom, according to the flesh, Christ came 


* See Chap. I, § 4. 




FOURTH COMMANDMENT\ 


245 


to be the universal Instructor and Saviour — of Jew 
and Gentile alike. 

3. The Decalogue, excepting such changeable cer¬ 
emonial elements as it may contain, or such appeals 
and reasons given, as were obviously peculiar to the 
Jews, may well be held in devout remembrance, even 
though replaced by the more than equivalent teach¬ 
ings of Christianity as the immediate ground for every 
Christian duty; first , for the sake of the Giver and 
the sublime circumstances of its delivery; second , as 
the “schoolmaster” to bring the world to Christ; and 
third , as a convenient summary of the substance of 
permanent duty to God and man, however that duty 
may have been more perfectly revealed by Christian¬ 
ity. 

With these harmonizing views and guiding princi¬ 
ples as they are meant to be, we may pursue our way 
with undisturbed equanimity through some further 
consideration of what has been, or can be, said of the 
relation of the Law to the Gospel, with special refer¬ 
ence to the relation of the Jewish Sabbath to the 
Christian Lord’s Day. 

On this subject of the relation of the Christian 
Lord’s Day to the Fourth Commandment, three prin¬ 
cipal views have been held, besides others which 
variously include or combine them. 

First. That the whole Decalogue is in force to-day 
as the law of duty for Christians; and that the Fourth 
Commandment is, practically, the ground for keeping 
the Christian Lord’s Day, made to appear such by 



246 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


quoting it as the sufficient answer to the question: 
Why do we keep the Lord’s Day ? 

Second. That the Fourth as well as the other 
Commandments were addressed only to the Jews , and 
hence are not the ground on which Christians are 
called upon to do their duty. In a word, while Chris¬ 
tians are not without a law, they are not under that 
which was given to the Jews. 

Third. That the Fourth Commandment is of a 
mixed character, containing a moral element which is 
recognized in a new institution, the Lord’s Day, 
having a sufficient ground of its own; and a cere¬ 
monial element, which belonged only to the Jewish 
Dispensation, and was wholly abolished with that. 

The advocates of each of these three views have 
their respective fears, which may be stated as follows : 
Those of the first view fear that if the Fourth Com¬ 
mandment be abandoned as the principal ground for 
keeping the Lord’s Day holy, no adequate authority 
for it will be left. Occasion for this fear is, we think, 
effectually removed by all that has been shown in the 
preceding chapters. 

Those of the second view fear that if the Fourth 
Commandment be made the only, or the principal, 
and hence the decisive, ground for keeping the Lord’s 
Day, the claims of this day will not be acknowledged 
by all that large portion of the Christian world who 
heartily and practically believe in the complete dis¬ 
placement of Judaism by Christianity. 

Whether there is occasion, or not, for this fear, we 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


24 7 


shall see further on. We may again say here, that 
the difference between the first and second views, 
even if expressed in the bladest and most unqualified 
terms, need not be at all appalling, nor by any means 
so alarming as might at first sight appear. For it is 
not the difference between law and anarchy, between 
the acknowledgment of duty and the denial of it, but 
is a difference only as to the authority on which the 
admitted duty is performed. 

Advocates of the third view fear that, between the 
contentions of rival extremes, the true ground of the 
Lord’s Day will be obscured, and then forgotten, and 
that the Day itself will thence become perverted, or 
lost, or, at least, endangered. 

As an aid in judging correctly between the advo¬ 
cates of the three views now mentioned, and their 
consequent characteristic fears, we will proceed to 
offer, first, some remarks on the entire Law of Moses, 
in order to gain a justly comprehensive view of that 
whole, of which the Fourth Commandment is one 
part. 

The Law of Moses is often spoken of as being 
partly moral and partly ceremonial. It is also in part 
political. Moreover, a popular feeling in some com¬ 
munities, perhaps arising from the retention of the 
Ten Commandments, only, in catechisms, views these 
as alone the moral law, and all the rest as ceremonial 
or political. But every requirement of the Law may 
have, more or less distinctly, a bearing on the claims 
of God, and on the moral, ceremonial or political duty 



248 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


of man, so that it is impossible actually to separate 
the Law into three divisions,—one only moral, another 
only ceremonial, and the third political. Hence it is 
better to say that the Law, as a whole, being founded 
on the claims of God and the nature of man, has a 
threefold character, in that it contains moral, cere¬ 
monial, and political elements. 

The Mosaic system was, above all, a pure Theocracy, 
in which, accordingly, Jehovah was acknowledged as 
the Supreme Ruler, to whom obedience in all things 
was directly due, he having immediate authority over 
all conduct. Hence men owed certain duties of wor¬ 
ship to him, depending on his creative Lordship of all 
beings and things,—duties to each other as his crea¬ 
tures, and as creatures of sense, certain ceremonial 
duties, as of outward and sensible cleanness, as sym¬ 
bols of inward holiness. 

That the threefold character, just mentioned, may 
be better apprehended, we will present the main di¬ 
visions only, and with only trifling changes, of the 
results of much learned labor, spent in arranging the 
entire Law, as found in Exodus to Deuteronomy 
inclusive, in a systematic code. Only a few of many 
illustrative references are given.* 

I. Civil Laws. 

i. Of Persons. 

1. Of Parents and Children (Lev. xx : 9). 

2. Of Husband and Wife (Ex. xxi: 7-9). 

* Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Am. Ed. 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


249 


3. Of Master and Servant (Ex. xxi: 20, 26, 27). 

4. Of Strangers (Ex. xxii: 21). 
ii. Of Things. 

1. Of Possessions (Lev. xxv : 29, 30). 

2. Of Debts (Deut. xv : 1-11). 

3. Of Taxes (Num. xviii: 20-24; Lev. xix : 9,10). 

II. Criminal Laws. 

i. Offenses against God. 

1. Exclusive worship of one God (Ex. xxii : 20, 

xxxiv : 14) [ 1 st Com.]. 

2. Idolatry (Deut. xiii, etc.) [2d Com.]. 

3. Witchcraft (Lev. xix : 31). 

4. Blasphemy (Lev. xxiv : 15, 16) [3d Com.]. 

5. Sabbath-breaking (Ex. xxiii: 12; Num. xv : 32- 

36) [4th Com.] 

6. Disobedience to, or contempt of, parents, or 

priests, acting as judges (both as repre¬ 
sentatives of divine authority — parents in 
place of God to children) (Ex. xxi: 15, 17, 
xxii: 28; Deut. xxi: 18-21) [5th Com.], 
ii. Offenses against One's Neighbor. 

1. Murder and kindred crimes (Ex. xxi: 12, 14, 20, 

21, 28, 30) [6th Com.]. 

2. Adultery and all like crimes (Deut. xxii: 13-29) 

[7th Com.]. 

3. Theft, trespass, kidnapping, etc. (Ex. xxii: 1—15, 

etc.) [8th Com.]. 

4. False witness (Ex. xxiii: 1-3) [9th Com.]. 

III. Constitutional Laws. 
i. Judiciary. 

1. Local judges (Ex. xviii: 25). 

2. Priests (Deut. xvii: 8-13, etc.). 

3. The King (1 Sam. xxii: n-19). 

4. The Seventy (Num. xi : 24-30), 



250 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


ii. Royalty. 

1. Limitations (Deut. xvii: 14-20). 

2. Revenue (1 Chron. xxvii: 25-31). 

IV. Ceremonial Laws. 

i. Holy Acts. 

1. Usual sacrifices (Ex. xxix: 38-42, etc.). 

2. Special sacrifices (Lev. viii, ix, etc.). 

ii. Holy Persons (Ex. xix : 5, 6; Lev. xix : 27, etc.). 

iii. Holy Things (Ex. xxv-xxviii, xxx). 

iv. Holy Times —Sabbath, Passover, etc. (Ex. xx : 9-11, 

xii: 3-27, etc.). 

This, then, in brief summary, and omitting numer¬ 
ous further and minor subdivisions, and the illustra¬ 
tive references suggesting them, is what is so fre¬ 
quently summed up in the New Testament in the one 
word, the “ Law.” First of all, it is now readily 
apparent that the rough division into the “Ten Com¬ 
mandments ” as the moral law, and all the rest as 
ceremonial, is quite erroneous, and only a superficial 
view, perhaps arising, as already mentioned, from the 
retention of the Commandments in Christian cate¬ 
chisms and liturgies, and the rejection of all the rest. 

Bearing in mind that moral law aims to secure 
righteousness in the substance of our acts, and cere¬ 
monial law to regulate their outward form, and the 
accessories of time and place, it is important to ob¬ 
serve that there is much that is moral in all parts of 
the system; notably in the freeing of Hebrew slaves 
(Ex. xxi : 1-6) and honor to a slave wife, bought or 
captive (Ex. xxi : 7-9), and the guaranty of gleanings 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


251 


to the poor (Lev. xix : 9, 10), and humanity to beasts 
(Deut. xxv : 4), under the civil law; in the strict in¬ 
junction not to pervert justice, and to show kindness 
to strangers (Ex. xxiii : 6-9), under the criminal 
law ; limitation of punishment to the guilty individual 
(Deut. xxiv : 16), and to an endurable degree (Deut. 
xxv : 1-3), under the constitutio 7 ial law; and the 
sanctity of man as the creature of God, symbolized 
by much of the ceremonial law (Lev. xi, etc.). 

Moreover, we see, as noted against various parts of 
the criminal law, that the substance of nine of the 
Ten Commandments is found elsewhere than in the 
Decalogue (Ex. xx), and is, in fact, scattered in many 
places throughout the body of the Law. Indeed this 
is equally true of the whole ten, for though the letter 
of the tenth, which forbids an inward state of mind, 
can not therefore be placed among statutes relating 
to outward acts, yet the spirit of it underlies many 
commands immediately relating to other things, as in 
Lev. xix: 18, xxv 135, 39; Ex. xxii: 5, xxiii 14; Lev. 
xx : 10, etc. 

But, conversely, not only is there a large moral 
element in other parts of the Law of Moses than the 
Ten Commandments, there is in these a ceremonial 
and a political element. In the Second Command¬ 
ment, besides the evidently moral element prohibit¬ 
ing the worship of any visible representatives of an 
invisible Spirit, there is the ceremonial element for¬ 
bidding the making of such representatives. And, 
though a free interpretation of this commandment 



252 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


might make it forbid the making of such things, only 
when intended for idolatrous purposes, yet, when we 
consider how much there is of the hero-worship which 
approximates towards idolatry, and remember, too, 
how the Jews, when under the Romans, protested 
against the introduction of sculptured ornaments as 
idolatrous, the first or ceremonial part of the com¬ 
mandment (Ex. xx : 4) might be strictly interpreted 
to forever forbid the arts of sculpture and modeling, 
if not of painting; things which, however, probably 
nobody supposes to be forbidden now. 

The Fifth Commandment also embraces the moral 
element of sincere sentiments of respect to parents, 
and to all holding a parental kind of relation to us, 
with the ceremonial one of implied suitable outward 
manifestations of such sentiments; and what may be 
considered as th apolitical one of a connection between 
obedience to this commandment and long life, and a 
consequently more rapid increase of the nation in 
numbers, wealth, and power. 

Again, in the Ninth Commandment, false witness, 
the particular form of lying which is forbidden, is 
immediately a crime against the judicial branch of the 
political constitution. 

In coming now to the Fourth Commandment, we 
must premise that by moral or natural duty is gen¬ 
erally meant that which is discernible by the light of 
Nature, as honor to parents; and by positive or cere¬ 
monial duty, that which rests on the authority of the 
law-giver, as in military orders. When, however, the 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


253 


rightfulness of the authority, owing to the wisdom, 
goodness, and relations to us, of its possessor, comes 
to be clearly perceived, this distinction between moral 
and positive nearly or quite vanishes. 

With these principles in mind, we now proceed to 
inquire concerning the Fourth Commandment, what 
elements in it are moral, and therefore permanent, 
and what are positive or ceremonial, and limited to 
the Mosaic Dispensation. In this inquiry we may be 
guided in part by an examination of the Command¬ 
ment itself, and partly by all the light which we have 
already found thrown by the New Testament on the 
keeping of the Lord’s Day. 

1. The duty of some appropriate recognition of 
God, as the Lord and Giver of all things, is suggested 
by the universal consciousness of a Supreme Being, 
and is therefore moral (Ex. xx : 8; Deut. v : 12). 

2. It is a natural suggestion of man’s social na¬ 
ture, that this recognition should be social as well as 
private, and hence at stated times. 

3. Experience shows alternations of labor and rest, 
at least by change of activities, to be beneficial, and 
so far as perceived to be so, obligatory (Ex. xx : 9, 10; 
Deut. v : 13, 14). 

4. The week and the day, both being, as before 
shown (Chapter VIII), natural divisions of time, 
spiritual enlightenment would suggest the conse¬ 
cration of the best hours of the first day to the 
Giver of all time, though the practice of the 
heathen world gives little encouragement to believe 



254 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


that this ever would have been done, except under 
Divine tuition. 

So far, there seems to be an adaptation in man’s 
natural constitution to apprehend and appreciate 
what Divine wisdom should ordain. But no appointed 
time could probably have been permanently observed, 
unless as a positive and ceremonial requirement, even 
though in harmony with the human constitution. 

From this review of the Law, there is evidently 
ground for the opinion, which has been held, that the 
Ten Commandments were a brief and portable repre¬ 
sentative summary of the entire Law. Each forbids 
the worst representative, as murder, of a whole class 
of sins; or the spirit, as covetousness, which oc¬ 
casions many sins ; or commands the highest rep¬ 
resentative, as honor to parents, of a whole class 
of duties (Lev. xix : 32); or forbids that special case, 
false-witness, of a general sin, untruthfulness, which 
most defeats justice. Hence we can only conclude 
that, though we can distinguish between different 
elements in the Law, we can not separate them. 
They stand as one whole; and the thunders of Sinai 
are sufficiently accounted for, not by supposing the 
Decalogue to be separate from, or more permanent 
than, the body of the Law, into all of which we have 
shown it to be intimately interwoven, but as the fit 
initiation of the whole, or, as we might say, the plant- 
* ing of the seed out of which the whole grew. View¬ 
ing the Law thus, as a whole, we have also to 
recollect the principle that any whole, as matter of 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


255 


measure , includes all its parts, and, as matter of action , 
involves all its parts. 

After this summary view of the Law of Moses as a 
whole, and in its principal divisions, we propose, and 
expect to establish, from Scripture, the two following 
propositions, which, as the greater includes the less, 
carry with them the same conclusions concerning the 
relation of the Lord’s Day to the Fourth Command¬ 
ment, that would be reached by a separate examina¬ 
tion of this question in particular; and with the ad¬ 
vantage of not making this relation an apparent 
exception, and even an arbitrary exception, to the 
relation between the Law and the Gospel generally. 

The propositions to be established are these : 

First. The Law of Moses as a whole, including 
the Ten Commandments, has been replaced by the 
precepts of Christianity, as the immediate ground for 
the Christian performance of duty. But, 

Second. None of the moral, that is natural, duties 
commanded in the Law of Moses have ceased, or 
can cease, to be duties, however completely that Law 
may have been superseded by Christianity, as a fuller 
revelation of duty, and as the more immediate, as well 
as higher ground for its performance. 

As to the first proposition, , St. Paul says, repeatedly 
and emphatically: “Ye are not under the law, but 
under grace” (Rom. vi: 14); “Ye are become dead 
to the law” (Rom. vii 14); “We are delivered from 
the law, that being dead wherein we were held ” 
(Rom. vii: 6); “The law was our schoolmaster . . . 



256 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


But after that faith is come, we are no longer under 
a schoolmaster” (Gal. iii: 24); “But if ye be led of 
the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (Gal. v: 18). 

Thus explicitly is the Law of Moses declared to be 
no longer the ground for the Christian performance of 
duty; and no separate argument is required to prove 
that this or that element of it, as the law of the Mosaic 
Sabbath, is not the ground for keeping tne Christian 
Lord’s Day, any further than as it is a pledge, to be 
gratefully cherished, even long after its fulfilment, 
that Christianity would surely not be less favored 
than Judaism was, with the heavenly gift of a day to 
be a fit token of a future and eternal rest; a rest, how¬ 
ever, be it remembered, not of indolence, or of un¬ 
consciousness—the Nirvana of Buddhism, which is 
but little short of annihilation — but the rest of only 
free, happy, unhindered, tireless activity. 

Just at this point it should be noticed, that the 
pledge in the older Law of a richer counterpart in the 
new, is not a matter of faith only, but of actual fact. 
A close study of the complete Sabbatic system of Is¬ 
rael shows that in its very construction there was a 
continual and a wonderful foreshadowing of two facts : 
first, that the first was one day to replace the seventh ; 
second, that the first, as the peculiarly sacred portion 
of time, was to be freer, higher, more joyous, and more 
glorious than the seventh. This has been elaborately 
and beautifully shown by another.* We can only 


* Eight Studies of the Lord’s Day, Study VI, Boston, 1888. 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


25 7 


briefly outline it here. “ The Sabbatic system con¬ 
sisted of five members. These five may be regarded 
as in two groups, one of three and one of two mem¬ 
bers. The three members of the first group were the 
sacred day, the sacred month, and the sacred year, 
each the last of a series of seven days, months, and 
years, respectively” (Ex. xxxi: 12-17; Lev. xxiii: 
23-44 J Lev. xxv : 1-7). “ The two members of the 

second group were a sacred day and a sacred year, 
immediately succeeding seven series of seven days, 
and seven series of seven years, respectively, and, 
therefore, each constituting the first in a new series 
of sevens.” These last were the Pentecost (Lev. 
xxiii: 15-21) and the Jubilee (Lev. xxv : 8-17). 

The Pentecost was the last of the fifty days of 
wheat harvest, and thus the first day of a week. Its 
special offering was two leavened loaves from the 
finest flour of the new crop, such loaves being, we 
may say, the “ first fruits ” of the resurrection of the 
seed sown. It was a day of holy social rejoic¬ 
ing and kindliness, in which the servant, the 
stranger, the fatherless, and the widow were to 
have a welcome share (Deut. xvi: 11, 14). Moreover, 
. as has been noticed, it was not commemorative, as 
was the Passover, of previous events in Jewish his¬ 
tory, and thus it further left the mind free to look 
forward, however dreamily it may have been, to the 
possible fact and the character of a better time in the 
future. 

The Jubilee was the year following seven weeks of 



258 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


years (Lev. xxv : 8-17), and thus was the first of a new 
week of seven-year periods. It was especially marked 
by a redistribution of the land, which then returned 
to the families who had originally received it; and by 
the liberation of all Hebrew bondmen. It was of ex¬ 
citing interest for these reasons, and because it could 
generally occur but once in the lifetime of any one 
individual. Its features kept alive a sentiment of 
human brotherhood, and together with its rarity, made 
it analogous to a joyful resurrection. All free, and 
home again, were its notes of joy, in making a new 
beginning; while it was also a year of rest from toil, 
bondage, and anxiety. 

The suggestions of both Pentecost and Jubilee 
were that “if one member rejoice, all the members 
should rejoice with it,” and this characteristically 
Christian sentiment was associated with a new be¬ 
ginning, with a first day, or a first year of a new series. 
These days, observed for centuries, therefore tended 
to educate Israel to say of the Resurrection day,— 
in which Jesus, “the chief corner stone,” but “which 
the builders rejected,” was, according to the Psalm¬ 
ist’s prophecy, made “the head stone of the corner”— 
“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will 
rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. cxviii: 24). 

With these indications in the Old Testament, as 
well as the New, that the Old was but the seed of the 
New, and remembering that the seed “is not quick¬ 
ened except it die” (1 Cor. xv : 36), we trust it is only 
appropriate to repeat again, that there is a vast differ- 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


259 


ence between substituting one rule of duty for another, 
under changed conditions, and abrogating one with¬ 
out putting another in its place. Emigrants seeking 
better opportunities in a land of liberty, are not law¬ 
less, because no longer bound by the laws of the 
country they have left. Hence no one need, or should, 
for one moment imagine that in what we are saying 
we are removing the foundations, or that the fullest 
acceptance of the conclusion here reached leaves the 
Christian, as it were, floating in space, with no moral 
footing on which to stand. Coming now to our 
second proposition , we immediately refer to the solid 
ground afforded in Heb. x : 9 : “He taketh away the 
first, that he may establish the second.” Also, each 
and every passage which so explicitly takes away the 
Law of Moses as the ground for the Christian’s perform¬ 
ance of his duty, replaces it by higher and holier 
ground. Thus: “Ye are not under the law, because ye 
are under grace” (Rom. vi: 14); “Ye are become 
dead to the law, that ye should be married to anotfier, 
even to him who is raised from the dead” (Rom. vii : 
4); if “we are delivered from the law,” it is “that 
we should serve in newness of spirit ” (Rom. vii: 6); if 
“we are no longer under a schoolmaster ,” it is because 
it has brought us “ unto Christ ” (Gal. iii : 24); if 
“ye are not under the law,” it is because “ye be led 
by the Spirit ’,” against whose holy fruits “there is no 
law” (Gal. v : 18, 23). See also 2 Cor. iii: 6-13, 
which is equally emphatic on the abolition of that 
which “was done away,” and the superiority, in char- 



26 o 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION . 


acter and permanence, of “that which remaineth”; as 
is also Heb. vii: 19. 

Thus, thoroughly and all-sufficiently, in connec¬ 
tion with passages before quoted, is the Christian Dis¬ 
pensation shown in Scripture to be complete in itself, 
and to have original and ample foundation and author¬ 
ity of its own. Like the Law of Moses as in the Deca¬ 
logue, it has, moreover, its own all-embracing sum¬ 
maries of duty as laid down by Christ Himself (Mark 
xii: 30, 31; Luke x : 27), and which, as explained by 
the same Divine Authority, includes no less than the 
universal Fatherhood of God, and the universal 
brotherhood of man ; regulative conceptions, which, 
by taking full possession of a human soul, would 
secure the free and glad performance of every duty 
to every creature. Mightily far-reaching, and wholly 
revolutionary of merely worldly teaching and practice 
concerning the proper objects of the universal passion 
of ambition, are our Lord’s words concerning the at¬ 
tainment of true greatness, while, as possessing 
divine authority, he justly makes himself the Model 
to be followed in seeking such greatness (Matt, xx: 
26—28). 

With these words of the Master exactly agree 
those of St. Paul: “ Owe no man any thing but to love 
one another: for he thatloveth another hathfulfilled the 
law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou' 
shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not 
bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there 
be any other commandment , it is briefly comprehended 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


26l 


in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: 
therefore love is the fulfilling of the law ” (Rom. xiii: 
8-10). 

This testimony is complete, comprehensive, expli¬ 
cit, and final. It is complete, in that it is expressed 
both positively and negatively; positively, by declar¬ 
ing that the commandment to love my neighbor as 
myself includes every possible particular command¬ 
ment ; negatively, by declaring that loving my neigh¬ 
bor as myself not merely implies doing all possible 
good to him, but not doing any ill to him. It is too 
comprehensive to admit of exceptions or extensions, 
too explicit to admit of evasion, and it is final, both as 
explaining its completeness by showing that love 
works all good and no harm, and still more by its 
imperative tone and absence of limitation to time or 
place. It is permanent and universal. 

And, as if the counterpart to the many reiterations 
in the Pentateuch of the cardinal points of the Law of 
Moses, to make forgetfulness of them impossible, this 
central Law of Love in the form of devotion to Christ 
is often repeated. For we read further, “For 
all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this : Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Gal. v: 14); 
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the 
Law <?/ Christ” (Gal. vi: 2); “Let each esteem 
other better than themselves”; and “Let this mind 
be in you, which was in Christ Jesus ” (Phil, ii: 3, 5). 
So St. James says, “ If ye fulfill the royal law accord- 



262 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


ing to the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself, ye shall do well ” (James ii: 8). So, again, 
St. Peter, “See that ye love one another with a 
pure heart fervently” (i Pet. i : 22). So, finally, 

“ And this commandment have we from him : That 
he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 
iv : 21). 

The passages just quoted imply that whatever of 
duty in the Law of Moses is thus of natural, that is, 
moral, and hence of permanent obligation, is not 
abolished, but is recognized as such by Christianity, 
though on new and holier grounds of its own, and 
with new and more exalted motives of its own. But 
we are not left to inference alone, however obvious, 
on this point. We have the most explicit declara¬ 
tions to show that while, as stated in our first proposi¬ 
tion, the Law is superseded by the Gospel as the Chris¬ 
tian ground for the performance of duty, the moral 
duties commanded in it are not abolished. Thus we 
read, “Do we then make void the law through faith? 
God forbid : yea, we establish the law ” (Rom. iii: 31); 
“What shall we say then'? Shall we continue in sin, 
that grace may abound? God forbid. What then? 
Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under 
grace? God forbid” (Rom. vi : 1, 2, 15,); and the 
whole chapter, which is mightily conclusive on this 
point. Again : “The law is holy, and the commahcS-, 
ment holy, and just, and good ”; “For we know that 
the law is spiritual ”; “For what the law could not 
do . . . God, sending his own Son . . . that 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


263 


the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us 
. . (Rom. vii : 12, 14, viii: 3, 4). 

From what has now been said we see that, under 
Christianity, the standard and motives of duty are 
elevated, rather than destroyed without replacement, 
and that duty consists in obedience to the teaching 
— whether by word or example — of Jesus Christ and 
his apostles. This is true in general, and also in re¬ 
lation to times and acts of devotion. The New Tes¬ 
tament exhorts to social worship, as we have seen, 
and recognizes and provides for it at stated times. 
Also, from the New Testament we learn, once for all, 
and comprehensively, that “God, who at sundry 
times and in divers manners spake in time past unto 
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
spoken unto us by his Son ... by whom also he 
made the worlds ,” and to whom he saith, “Thou, Lord, 
in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, 
and the heavens are the work of thine hands ” (Heb. 
i: 1, 2, 10). According to this wonderful declaration, 
the permanent memorial reason for the Jewish Sabbath 
applies to the Christian Lord’s Day as well,* while 
the exclusively Jewish reason for keeping the 
Mosaic Sabbath, namely, as a memorial of the deliver¬ 
ance from Egypt, is replaced by an especially Christian 
reason of the grandest significance,— the cardinal fact 

* See Turner’s “ Companion to Genesis,” where these reasons 
are well defended as not contradictory, and as called for by the 
positive character of the Fourth Commandment in contrast with 
the clearly moral character of all the others. 



264 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


of the Resurrection as the ground for keeping the 
Lord’s Day. “It celebrates the completion of this 
his mightiest work of love to man; inasmuch as it is 
a far greater triumph of Almighty power to redeem a 
world from sin than it is to create a world of beauty 
and order from chaos. 

“ ’ T was great to speak a world from naught, 

’ T was greater to redeem.” 

Hence, also, as Nitzsch well says — with* much 
more that is equally admirable—“Sunday is the fes¬ 
tival of Redemption, on the day when we celebrate the 
work of creation,” and adds as follows : “ For although 
the holy day, regarded as an element of the Jewish 
Law, is no longer binding on Christians (Gal. iv : 9), 
still it is to be viewed as an element of a succession 
of time, as the Lord’s Day . . . On that day 

. . . the Lord has procured rest for his people 
. . . hence it is a public day ... As the 
week, like the month, year, and day, affords a natural 
division of time, so the law of the seventh day is to 
the like extent grounded on creation, as soon as we 
admit that it is man’s destiny, not only to live through, 
but also to consecrate, every period of natural exist¬ 
ence. Hence a day of rest is a natural divine insti¬ 
tution, which is commended to the conscience by such 
an institution in the old covenant, with reference to 
a true veneration for and fellowship with God.” 

* Nitzsch, “ System of Christian Doctrine” : T. & T. Clark, 
Edinburgh. 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


26 5 


In the light of views so elevated as these—and which 
are also typical ones—and so faithfully and dutifully 
responsive as they are to the gospel law of love and 
liberty, we see that not only—as is well known—do 
individuals and nations have their untaught infancy } 
unsettled youth, and ripened maturity; but that the 
great world, itself, experiences the same stages of 
development. As the carefully trained child out¬ 
grows the necessity for peremptory commands as the 
only means of securing the performance of duty ; and 
as nations learn to become strong, by free, patriotic 
devotion in the hearts of the people, rather than by 
the might of the sovereign ; so, in the moral develop¬ 
ment of mankind, under divine tuition, it becomes 
more and more generally true, that the enlightened 
mind and purified heart become the guaranties of 
right conduct, rather than the power and authority of 
a lawgiver receiving unreflecting obedience. 

Hence it is, that we need not be perplexed or 
doubtful as to the sufficient Christian authority for 
the Lord’s Day, though nowhere in the New Testa¬ 
ment do we find a trace of these three things, viz., — 

1. The grounding of the obligation to keep the 
Lord’s Day on the Fourth Commandment. 

2. The transfer of the Mosaic Sabbath, in its pe¬ 
culiar features, from the seventh day to the first day. 

3. Any precise rules, beyond a general indication 
of piety and charity, to regulate the manner of its ob¬ 
servance ; all that being left, in common with other 
duties, to the law of faith working by love, which is, 



266 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


therefore, by its very nature, the “law of liberty,” 
which is also the “law of Christ.” Nevertheless, a 
matter of so much importance is not left to a blind 
and untaught faith, but to a faith which is abundantly 
taught in the practical operation of the law of love by 
the united words and deeds of Christ himself and of his 
apostles, and by the example of the Church, guided 
by his Spirit, and which is his Body. 

Again: If the preceding views of the general relation 
of the Law of Moses to the Law of Christ are correct, 
they also afford a satisfactory answer to those who 
speak of the asserted independence of the Lord’s Day 
of the Fourth Commandment, as if “ one-tenth ” of the 
Decalogue was thereby “ abolished,” “ stricken out,” 
or “effaced.”* This startling form of expression, 
thrice repeated in nearly the same words, but with 
the apparent understanding that no one supposes the 
rest of the Decalogue to be “effaced,” creates a false 
issue, viz., the arbitrary striking out of one of the 
commandments, while all the rest remain in force. 
No one, we suspect, holds such a view. The truth 
is, that in whatever sense any one of the command¬ 
ments remains in force, all of them remain in force ; 
also, that in whatever sense any one of them has 
“waxed old and vanished away,” all of them have 
vanished. And this sense, in each case, we have 
striven, but not too laboriously, we trust, and not too 
superficially, we hope, to render clear. 


♦ Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1881, pp. 256, 257, 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


2 67 


Finally, that there is nothing novel or peculiar in 
the position taken in this chapter, may sufficiently 
appear from the following quotations from thinkers 
too able and pious to be lightly esteemed: 

Richard Baxter, author of the celebrated “ Saints’ 
Rest,” wrote that the whole Law of Moses was “for 
the Jews, and bound no other nation, and is done 
away by the dissolving of their republic, and by 
Christ. As Moses was ruler, or mediator, to none but 
the Jews, the words of the Decalogue are appropriate 
to them as redeemed from Egyptian bondage; so the 
tables were delivered to no other, and a law can not 
bind without any promulgation.” * But to show that 
by this he meant, as we here do, that the abrogation 
of the Law of Moses by Christianity did not leave 
Christendom lawless, he also says, in his work entitled 
The Christian Directory f: “So much of Moses’s 
laws as are part of the law of Nature, or of any posi¬ 
tive law of Christ , or of the civil law of any State , are 
binding as they are such natural, Christian or civil 
laws. But not one of them as Mosaical; though the 
Mosaical Law is of great use to help us to understand 
the law of Nature in many particular instances in 
which it is somewhat difficult to us.” 

Locke, in his Letter concerning Toleration,% says : 
“The call, ‘Hear, O Israel,’ sufficiently restrains the 


* Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., vol. i, p. 244. 
f Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., vol. ii, p. 30. 
J Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., vol. ii, p. 36. 



268 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


law only to that people.” Bishop Sherlock* adds: 
“ Moses, who best understood the extent of his own 
commission, says thus to the people of Israel: 4 What 
nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judg¬ 
ments so righteous as all this law, which I set before 
you this day?’ (Deut. iv: 8). David also says: 
“ ‘ He showeth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and 
his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so 
with any nation, and as for his judgments, they have 
not known them/ From all which it is evident that 
the Law of Moses has no claim [as suc/i] to our 
obedience.” 

Says Isaac Barrow,f one of the most eminent of 
English theologians (1630-1677): “The Decalogue 
is in several places of Scripture called a covenant 
with the Jewish people ; and the observation of this 
Law is likewise so called in a particular and special 
manner : it is expressed to have been appointed as a 
sign or characteristical note, whereby their peculiar 
relation to God might be discerned, and they dis¬ 
tinguished from all other people.” He thinks that, in 
particular,, the Fourth Commandment differs from 
the rest, the “obligation thereto being not, discern- 
ibly to natural light, grounded in the reason of the 
thing, we can nowise be assured that an uni¬ 
versal and perpetual obligation thereto was in¬ 
tended, or that its obligation did extend further than 

* Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., vol. ii, p. 36. 

f Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., vol. ii, p. 66. 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


269 


to the Jews . . . that this Law, as it was not 

known or practised before Moses, so it ceased to 
oblige after Christ, being one of the shadows which 
the evangelical light dispelled, one of the burdens 
which this law of liberty did take off us.” 

Yet, with consciences enlightened by this “evan¬ 
gelical light,” he thinks we can, without a positive law 
for ourselves, discover in this Law, though given only 
to the Jews, much of God’s will. 

1. That we should remember and consider the 
glorious works of God for the good of his creatures. 

2. That we should not allow worldly labors and 
cares to exhaust our bodies or spirits, or those of men 
or animals under our authority or care. 

3. That these good ends can not be accomplished, 
without setting apart regular times for them, under 
such limitations that all can share the rest and benefit 
of them. 

To give one example from more recent writers, we 
can not find or think of a clearer summary of the pre¬ 
ceding pages, and of the relation of the Lord’s Day 
to the New and the Old Dispensations, than is afforded 
by the following extract from the Bampton Lectures 
for 1840:* “With respect to the Mosaic Sabbath, 
the Fourth Commandment is not, I apprehend, the 
true foundation of our Christian duty. Nay, I dare 
not appeal directly to that, as a commandment obli¬ 
gatory upon Christian men, which no Christian 

* By Dr. Hawkins, quoted by Dr. Hessey, B. Lects., i86o,p. 357. 



270 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


Church has ever yet enjoined or observed. Neither 
may any Christian Church presume to teach, as a 
Divine Commandment, one portion of a positive pre¬ 
cept, whilst, of her own authority, she abrogates 
another. That is the privilege of inspiration alone. 
We say, indeed, and we say justly, that not hallowing 
the seventh day, yet hallowing one day in seven, we 
fulfill the spirit of the law. But a positive institution, 
if obligatory at all, is to be obeyed also in the letter; 
and what now appears so slight a change (to say 
nothing here of the total abandonment in the Christian 
Church of the awful strictness in the commanded ob¬ 
servance of the Mosaic rest) [the Doctor here seems to 
ignore the Scotch and other like Sabbatarians], the 
mere alteration of the day would scarcely, in the first 
instance, have appeared a trivial change ... It 
is to the spirit of the commandment that we appeal, 
not to its letter. The letter we believe to have been 
abrogated, but the spirit survives. The spirit of the 
command was not to be abrogated, which was dis¬ 
tinguished, in so marked a manner, from the positive 
institutions of the Law ; pronounced by the awful 
voice of God, placed alone, among moral precepts, 
the authoritative declarations of our natural duties, 
each unconnected with shadowy and typical rites, 
which were partial enactments, temporary in their 
very nature, while this rested upon the ground of 
universal religion, applicable alike to all the sons of 
men. The spirit of this great command survives, ac¬ 
cordingly, in another ordinance equally of Divine ap- 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 


271 


pointment, but more spiritual and more comprehen¬ 
sive; pointing to the doctrines of Redemption, yet 
still embracing every thing which pervaded the Mosaic 
precept, of glory to the Creator, and benefit to his 
creatures, even to the lowest of his creatures, those 
whom we too frequently oppress, but who are never 
forgotten by him. In this sense, and in this sense 
alone, the Church of England, I believe, prays that 
we may observe the Fourth Commandment, the 
spirit, namely, of the Mosaic Law, as it still survives 
in the Christian ordinance of the Lord’s Day. . . . 
Nevertheless, the prime and independent proof oi its 
Divine original remains, as before, in the universal 
consent of the Christian Church; but, not resting 
there, traced up to apostolic practice and implied 
apostolic authority . . . We may well esteem 

this sacred ordinance far above every other, which 
can make no such appeal to Holy Scripture; valuing 
others, indeed, in proportion to their uses, and im¬ 
portance, and universality, and antiquity, as ordinances 
of the Church, but reverencing this, and this alone, 
among Christian festivals, as of Divine authority.” 

In the difficulty of understanding the same words 
in the same way by different parties, by reason of 
their different traditions, associations, and blinding 
or warping prejudices and jealousies, it may be im¬ 
possible for human wit to frame any statement which 
would be acceptable to all. But to us it seems hard 
to imagine one in which every ground of holy weekly 
rest is better balanced and proportioned and given 



2 72 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


its due place than in the one just quoted — the au¬ 
thority of the New Testament primary; then that of 
the Church as the great, comprehensive institution of 
the New Testament; then that of the Old Testament 
as the law of the provisional and preparatory dispen¬ 
sation, whose principal force for us consists in its 
pledge, abundantly fulfilled, that Christianity would 
surely, at least, be not inferior to it, or wanting in 
a full equivalent for whatever the Law could supply; 
then, finally, that of natural religion, as illumined and 
sanctioned by Revelation. 

In one word: The spirit of the Fourth Command¬ 
ment declares that a portion of our time should be 
devoted to rest and worship. But each dispensation 
has its own law as to how and when it should be so 
devoted, and as Christianity is for the whole world 
for all time, the obligation to honor its sacred day, 
the Lord’s Day, is universal and permanent. 



A PRIMEVAL SABBAT.H. 


273 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE LORD’S DAY AND A PRIMEVAL 
SABBATH. 

I T only remains now to devote a chapter, for the 
sake of completeness, to a brief notice of those in¬ 
dications of a weekly Sabbath in the long Patriarchal 
Dispensation from Adam to Moses, which some have 
thought can be found in the earlier Old Testament 
writings. 

These indications are too few and obscure to afford 
substantial ground of obligation for an observance 
belonging to the Gospel Dispensation, which is, of 
itself, sufficiently luminous as to all its own require¬ 
ments. But so far as there are hints in the patriarchal 
records of a recognized seven-day period of time, they 
reinforce the claim that the week is a natural 
division of time, deserving therefore of separate con¬ 
secration. 

Also, the account of the Creation Rest (Gen. ii: 
23), taken in connection with certain New Testament 
revelations as to the Persoi) of the Creator, indicates 
a pledge that each and every successive dispensa¬ 
tion should have, in some sort, its weekly holy day. 

In this chapter, we shall accordingly endeavor to 



2 74 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


establish, or to reinforce, so far as already maintained, 
the following propositions : — . 

First. Whatever support the Christian Lord’s 
Day receives from the Creation Rest, and a supposed 
Patriarchal Sabbath founded upon it, it derives 
through Christ as Creator, and hence as having been, 
from the beginning, the Lord of any and every suc¬ 
cessive holy rest-day that man has enjoyed; so that 
any indications of a Patriarchal Sabbath are a pledge 
that Christianity would not be left destitute of such 
a rest-day. 

Second. Whether there was, or was not, a weekly 
Sabbath, during the patriarchal age, there is certainly 
no such clear evidence of one as to afford any ade¬ 
quate authority for the Lord’s Day, by way of either 
command or example — supposing such authority to 
be wanting elsewhere. 

While some find all-sufficient authority for a well- 
kept Lord’s Day within the New Testament, and in 
the action of Christendom based on indications and 
beginnings which are recorded therein, others — as 
we have had occasion to mention before, in other 
connections — being jealously sensitive to its obliga¬ 
tion, and appreciative of its value, have sought, as it 
would seem with needless anxiety, to entrench it 
within a triple line of defenses, by supplementing 
what would seem to appear to them the deficiency of 
the Christian foundation for it, by supports borrowed 
from the Law of Moses, and from the Creation Rest, 
and a supposed Patriarchal Sabbath. 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


275 


In reference to the latter, reliance is placed on the 
Divine example, stated in the Fourth Commandment 
as a reason for its observance, and on the word, “ re¬ 
member/’ in the same commandment. The argu¬ 
ment in this last case is, that a thing to be remem¬ 
bered must necessarily be something belonging to 
time past. 

The first of these points has already been disposed 
of, as indicated by such passages as John i: 3, 10, 
and Heb. i : 10; which make Christ, the Incarnate 
Word, the immediate Agent in creation ; so that, with¬ 
out borrowing authority from patriarchal times, we 
learn directly from the New Testament that the 
Lord’s Day is properly kept in honor of Christ as 
Creator , as well as Redeemer. 

Further, “our redemption was greater than our crea¬ 
tion,” and therefore we do well to keep the first day 
in memory of the crowning act of our redemption, 
rather than the seventh day in memory of our crea¬ 
tion. Moreover, we do well here to remember that, 
as man was made on the sixth day (Gen. i : 26, 31), the 
seventh day of creation was the first complete day of 
man’s existence, so that most appropriately, as to him¬ 
self, he celebrates both a completed creation, as well 
as his own most glorious redemption, on what was to 
him the first day of the week. 

In other words, again: Gen. ii : 2, 3, is not to be 
quoted in support of the Lord’s Day, on account of its 
being the foundation of a supposed Patriarchal Sab¬ 
bath, thus of an immemorial usage, but because, as 



276* 


1HE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


understood in the light of the New Testament, it is 
Christ as Creator who is there- referred to, and the 
passage gives his sanction to the day which he made, 
when, before Abraham, he was, (John viii: 58). 

As to the word, “remember,” briefly noticed before, 
we have seen how much in the Fourth Command¬ 
ment is positive, that is, depending on external au¬ 
thority, rather than on the natural conscience. In 
other words, while recognition of God in some way 
appears to be a universal dictate of humanity, and 
while that it should be social, and hence periodical, 
may be natural suggestions, the heathen observances 
of all times and peoples indicate the absence of a 
naturally discoverable right manner and frequency of 
such recognition. But, as external commands are 
more readily overlooked than instinctive dictates, 
they need to be enforced by especial caution to “ re¬ 
member ” them. 

So much for the argument from reason, rela¬ 
tive to this word. But there is an argument 
from fact. High authorities state that there is not 
a trace in the Old Testament of the actual obser¬ 
vance of a weekly Sabbath in patriarchal times. 
Whatever, then, may be the now unknown fact, as 
to that long-gone period of twenty-five hundred years, 
the reasonably asserted absence of any trace of a 
weekly Sabbath observance during its long contin¬ 
uance, from the Creation to the Exodus, is proof 
enough that none will ever discover such unmistak¬ 
able evidence of a Patriarchal Sabbath, as to make 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


2 77 


such a day binding, by way of immemorial example, 
upon Christians. 

But again : It may not be perfectly fair to speak 
of the existence of the Patriarchal Sabbath as assum¬ 
ed, since an intimation of it has been thought to exist 
in the reason, “wherefore the Lord blessed the sev¬ 
enth day, and hallowed it.” But it should be remem¬ 
bered that these words were penned by Moses, who 
lived at the end of the long Patriarchal Dispensation, 
and, in the absence of any record whatever of an act¬ 
ual Patriarchal Sabbath, we are free to suppose that 
the fact stated in them was unknown to mankind till 
he wrote them. But we have already sought to show 
that Gen. ii: 2, 3, gives Christ’s own authority—by way 
of primeval example , too, now known, if not then, to his 
own day, and not to an undiscoverable Patriarchal 
Sabbath. Indeed, the point just stated is noticed 
only because raised by those who were in anxious 
search of such a Sabbath as in some way of present 
authority - r and to show more fully the needlessness 
of such a fruitless search. 

Once more, and from a quite different point of 
view, as no additional creative acts are known to have 
been performed since man’s creation, God’s seventh 
day, or period of rest, so far as this world is con¬ 
cerned, still continues, and allows us to believe, as 
geology seems to require, viz., that the other six days 
of Gen. i were the periods of unknown length of 
which geology tells. Thus, again, we in celebrating 
our redemption, sealed by the Resurrection, on the 



278 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


first day, do also enter into God’s present rest from 
creative activity, and share, in our finite mortal way, 
his joy in his own works of creation and redemption. 

We now conclude, from what has thus far appear¬ 
ed, that the Lord’s Day is a distinctive feature of 
Christianity, under no necessity of going beyond 
Christianity for its authority, yet including within it 
whatever is moral, or of the law of Nature, in the 
Fourth Commandment, though under a Christian 
sanction, and connected with the Creation Rest, 
through Christ as the immediate Agent in Creation 
(Heb. i: 8-10). 

- But while this summary treatment of the question 
of a primeval Sabbath may satisfy those who feel no 
need for aught besides distinctively Christian au¬ 
thority for the distinctively Christian sacred day ; 
something further may seem due to those who sin¬ 
cerely seek to strengthen the sense of obligation to 
keep the day by arguments drawn from the patri¬ 
archal ages. 

We have seen, we repeat, the absence of pos¬ 
itive command in the New Testament for the 
weekly celebration of the Lord’s Day; also what 
seems to some the scanty and doubtful record¬ 
ed evidence of apostolic practice on this point. 
Then we have seen how those who desire further 
ground for their faith and practice, turn, according 
to their training, prejudices, or associations, to the 
authority or testimony of the Church, as the living 
“Body,” of which Christ is the “Head,” or to the 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


279 


Fourth Commandment, and to a doubtful Patriarchal 
Sabbath. 

We may therefore here add a few further remarks 
on the supposed primeval Sabbath, otherwise called 
the Creation or Patriarchal Sabbath. This subject 
might be dismissed with but a few words, were it not 
that much speculation has been engaged in concern¬ 
ing it. For, unless a mind becomes carried away 
with it, so that ingenious conjecture is grasped at as 
if it were plain demonstration, there would seem to 
be little need of discussing it at all. Indeed, we 
can not be persuaded that more is necessary at this 
point than simply to exhibit some of the texts which 
have been relied upon to show that there was a 
Patriarchal Sabbath. 

The evident over-straining of the texts to make 
them prove the existence of any thing of the sort, is 
sufficient of itself to show that no such day can be 
proved to have existed. It is also a sufficient warn¬ 
ing not to weaken the real grounds of the Lord’s 
Day, by a prejudicial exhibition of failure in establish¬ 
ing really needless extraneous reasons for its observ¬ 
ance. 

We will now give a few examples of the texts 
alluded to: 

i. In Gen. iv : 3, we read : “ And in process of time , 
it came to pass that” Cain and Abel brought offer¬ 
ings unto the Lord. An alternative translation being 
“at the end of days,” some have supposed it might 
mean the end of the year. Others have leaped to 



280 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


the conclusion that a seventh-day Sabbath was 
meant. 

2. Gen. vii:4—>“For yet seven days, and I will 
cause it to rain upon the earth.” 

3. Gen. vii: 10—“ And it came to pass after seven 
days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.” 

4. Gen. viii: 10—“And Noah staid yet other 
seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of 
the ark.” 

5. Gen. viii : 12 — “And he staid yet other seven 
days.” It being assumed that Gen. ii: 2, 3, relates to 
a seventh-day Sabbath, observed from the beginning, 
forgetting that Moses recorded it not till 2500 years 
after, as a Divine example for the Jewish Sabbath 
then instituted, these passages are taken as proofs 
to establish the supposition — which can never be 
more than a supposition — of a Patriarchal Sabbath. 
But to proceed. 

6. Gen. xxix :27— “And Laban said [to Jacob], 
Fulfill her week [Leah’s].” Compare Judges xiv : 7,8, 
12, which shows that a marriage feast lasted seven 
days. 

7. Job ii: 13 — “So Job’s three friends sat down 
with him upon the ground seven days and seven 
nights.” 

8. Gen. 1 : 10—“And Joseph made a mourning 
for his father seven days.” 

9. Gen. xxvi: 5 — “Abraham . . . kept my 
charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my 
laws.” 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


28l 


Here, as a curious example of the effect of one’s 
fundamental views upon his reasoning on collat¬ 
eral topics, we may say, speaking generally, that 
the party who are fully satisfied with the Christian 
foundation, alone, for Christian observances, differ 
on several such topics from the party who appar¬ 
ently think it necessary to reinforce the authoriy of 
the Lord’s Day by supports drawn from every quarter. 

First. The former party, when going beyond the 
New Testament, reflect that the Church was in full 
operation before the New Testament was written, and 
declare that is a vital part of Christianity, and 
that its decisions, as an undivided whole, have a 
high degree of authority, not, as before said, as against 
Scripture, or independent of it, but as in unity with 
it, through the same guiding Spirit who inspires 
both. 

The latter party, by resorting to the Old Testa¬ 
ment, and to Nature, with keen inquisitiveness, when 
searching beyond the bounds of the New Testament, 
imply a lower view of the authority of the Church, 
as the Body of Christ. 

Second. The former party lay little stress on the 
so-called Creation Sabbath (Gen. ii : 2, 3), except as 
presenting God, by accommodation to human capaci¬ 
ties, as divinely resting, though not idly, but in 
Divine enjoyment and maintenance of his own works, 
as it is written : “My Father worketh hitherto, and 
I work.” The latter party claim this passage 
as proof of a Sabbath, ordained at, and observed from, 



282 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


the very beginning, and hence as a strong support 
to what apparently seems to them to lack adequate 
authority from Christianity alone. 

Third. The former party can be only amazed that 
any one could see, in the texts quoted above, any evi¬ 
dence of a weekly Sabbath for the 2500 years, more 
or less, from the Creation to Moses. The latter 
party, however, animated, it would seem, by a sense 
of necessity, see in these texts, braced, so to speak, 
at the two ends of the line of 2500 years, by the 
Creation Sabbath of Gen. ii: 2, 3, and by the word, 
“remember,” in the Fourth Commandment — they, 
we say, see in these texts traces, or presumptive evi¬ 
dence, if not proof, of a Patriarchal Sabbath. 

Fourth. The former party, knowing from daily 
life, that “ remember” relates to things to come, but 
from their nature, or some other cause, likely to be 
forgotten, quite as often as it does to things past, 
consider that the word “remember” in the Fourth 
Commandment is one indication of, or is a badge of, 
its more largely ceremonial character, and its rela¬ 
tively less distinct moral character, as a law obvious 
from Nature or conscience. The latter party make 
this “ remember” point backward, and help to sup¬ 
port the idea of a Patriarchal Sabbath. 

But if such forced and far-fetched arguments for 
a Patriarchal Sabbath, as the above texts seem to 
afford, are all that the most solicitous search can 
find, there is a passage which yields at least as clear a 
proof that no such a day was known or observed. 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


2 83 


For in Gal. iii 119, we read that the law was added 
four hundred and thirty years after Abraham. What 
was then added to whatever had been promulgated — 
or naturally known — before, was therefore no part of 
what was in force before. 

This reasoning forbids the strained sabbatical use 
of Gen. xxvi: 5, without implying that there were not 
some “laws” which were “kept” by Abraham, who 
was by anticipation virtually under the Gospel (John 
viii: 56, and Gal. iii: 16, 17). It leaves him and other 
patriarchs as we plainly find them, not without re¬ 
ligion and worship (Gen. iv : 2, 3, 26, v : 24, vi: 9, 
xii:7, xiv:i8, 19, etc.), but yet not possessing any 
known set day for these purposes. 

But, most seriously, there is a principle concerning 
strained arguments for or against any part of relig¬ 
ion, that ought to be conscientiously remembered. 
It is this,—and St. Chrysostom, who died so long ago 
as A. D. 407, declared it, in pronouncing him a be¬ 
trayer of the truth who takes refuge in indirect 
means to uphold it. And those who most deeply and 
wisely love the purely Christian Lord’s Day, may 
well ask themselves whether there is not some natural 
connection between the sudden and rapid growth of 
its wholesale violation in certain places, and the con¬ 
founding, in those same places, of this spiritual festi¬ 
val of the Gospel with another and different day ; 
coupled with unauthorized means of enforcing an un¬ 
authorized manner of observing it. 

A high authority says, for example, of New Eng- 



284 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


land : “The almost universal belief in these northern 
colonies seems to have been, that the Lord’s Day rest¬ 
ed on the same Divine command with the Jewish 
seventh day ; and they held that the state ought to 
see that it was kept holy according to the Law given 
to the Jews, although they by no means claimed that 
every religious or moral obligation, even of an out¬ 
ward nature, ought to be enforced by civil law and 
penalty. These ancient statutes have gone out of 
use, or have been repealed in great measure.”* 

But the reputation of such laws outlives them, and 
so does some remnant, more or less obvious and in¬ 
fluential, of the erroneous views and spirit which 
led to their enactment and once rigorous enforce¬ 
ment. Hence it would seem to have been better, if 
those laws, views, and spirit had never been ; since 
the deplorable reaction from them towards Parisian 
license would then seem to have been less liable to 
have taken place. 

And that a thoughtful man may love, honor, and 
defend the Christian Lord’s Day, without substan¬ 
tially identifying it with either the Jewish, or an imagi¬ 
nary Patriarchal Sabbath, or making it depend on 
them for its authority, is plain from the closing words 
of the work of one of the apparently most indefatiga¬ 
ble students of the subject. 

“The duty of reposing on Sunday must be advo¬ 
cated, not on Jewish, but on rational, moral, and 

*T. D. Woolsey, D. D., in the Sabbath Essays of Oct., 1879. 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


285 


Christian grounds. These are well able to sustain the 
venerable and beneficent institution, and ‘I feel con¬ 
fident that, as knowledge and wisdom increase, our 
weekly day of rest will not only be more and more 
highly esteemed, but be better and better employed.”* 

Again : Much has been made by some of a 
partly real, partly supposed, universal week of the 
Gentiles, as founded on a primeval Sabbath, or as an 
indicative trace of it.f But when we learn from his¬ 
tory what diligent observers of the heavens the an¬ 
cient Eastern nations were, we are satisfied with the 
simple explanations, that the week, when recognized 
at all, was founded on the conspicuous weekly changes 
of the moon ; or that the seven-day period was 
fixed by the seven planets known to the ancients, and 
from which indeed the days were named. But in fact 
the week was not a universally recognized period. Ac¬ 
cording to Humboldt and others, none of the Ameri¬ 
can aborigines possessed it; while Dr. Hessey reminds 
his readers, that “the month of the Romans was 
divided into Kalends, Nones, and Ides, marked by 
the 1st, the 5th or 7th, and the 13th or 15th, of 
each month ; while the nundines, or nine-day periods, 
were marked by the Etruscan market days. The 
Greeks, moreover, observed ten-day periods.:): But 

*Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., vol. ii, p. 464. 

f See Chap. X, and “The Lord’s Day,” Philad., Am. S. S. 
Union, p. 120, etc. 

t See also Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Amer. Ed., Arts. “ Sab¬ 
bath ” and “ Week,” and “ Eight Studies Lord s Day,” p. 68. 



286 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION 


not only is there no proof of a universally recognized 
week from the beginning, there is none that its recog¬ 
nition, where existing, included the idea of one of 
its days as sacred to religious uses. We do not know 
whether the language of the Mosaic record accommo¬ 
dated itself to a week already otherwise known, or 
whether it gave rise to the recognition of such a period. 
In any case, any respectable work of reference seems to 
show sufficiently that no conclusive argument for the 
Lord’s Day, nothing that could bind any conscience, 
can be founded on a supposed universal week. 

But, not to be mischievously misunderstood at this 
point, it is important to note carefully that there are 
two distinct and very different grounds for paying 
scant regard to the argument for the Christian Lord’s 
Day, founded upon a supposed Patriarchal Sabbath as 
an authoritative example. The first ground is a dis¬ 
position to discredit the Mosaic account of the divine 
origin of the world and of its early institutions. 
With this disposition we have no sympathy. The 
second ground is that there is no real necessity for 
searching for such authoritative example. The origin 
of the week may have been natural or supernatural. 
The patriarchs may or may not have known and 
habitually observed a weekly sacred day. Christianity, 
as shown in the preceding chapters (II-V), is suffi¬ 
cient unto itself. 

But not to confine ourselves to argument alone, on 
this subject, however conclusive to sympathizers with 
it, we will call in some testimony in illustration of 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


287 


the previous assertion that high authorities can not 
find a trace of Patriarchal Sabbath observance. 

Milton, a profound and able thinker and student, 
as well as poet, says:* * * § “Whether the institution of 
the Sabbath was ever made known to Adam, or 
whether any commandment relative to its observance 
was given, previous to the delivery of the Law on Mt. 
Sinai . . . can not be ascertained, Scripture being 

silent on the subject.” 

Dr. Hessey,f speaking of the Sabbath as not a 
matter of moral law, in the sense of being discover¬ 
able as an obligation without express revelation, 
quotes Archbishop BramhallJ as saying, of patriar¬ 
chal times: “We find oblations, and priests, and 
sacrifices, and groves or oratories, and prayers, and 
thanksgivings, and vows, and whatever natural 
religion doth dictate about the service of God; but we 
find not one instance of the execution of this law of 
the seventh-day Sabbath.” And Dr. Hessey continues: 
“I may add, that had the law of its observance been 
natural, or morale the heathen of Canaan, who are re¬ 
proached, and with singular minuteness, for many 
transgressions of the law of Nature . . . would 

surely have been reproached for transgression of this. 
Now they are nowhere so reproached.” 

Paley, quoted by Hessey,§ says: “If the Sabbath 

* Quoted in Cox, Lit. Sab. Quest., vol. ii. 

f Sunday, p. 131. 

X Sunday, p. 134. 

§ Sunday, p. 137. 





288 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


had been instituted at the time of the Creation [not 
merely set apart for future use, as was Jeremiah 
(Jer. i : 5), or St. Paul (Gal. i: 15), as Archbishop 
Bramhall points out], and if it had been observed all 
along from that time to the departure of the Jews out 
of Egypt ... it appears unaccountable that no 
mention of it . . . should occur, either in the 

general history of the world ... or, which is 
more to be wondered at, in the lives of the first three 
Jewish patriarchs, which in many parts of the ac¬ 
count is sufficiently circumstantial and domestic.” 

And, once more, Kurtz’ “History of the Old Cove¬ 
nant,” quoted by Dr. Hcssey,* says: “It must be 
confessed that we can not bring any proof of the 
existence of a sabbatic festival in the ante-Sinaitic 
period.” 

On the contrary, it is asserted,! by an opposite 
class of writers, that “The Sabbath . . . was 

instituted of God in Eden”; “This Sabbath which 
God made for man in Eden , has never been abrogated, 
nor modified in substance”; “We find this Sabbath 
in existence before the giving of the Decalogue”; 
“It was simply re-established at Sinai”; “‘ Remem¬ 
ber the Sabbath . . . proves it an existing insti¬ 

tute, and points back to its primeval institution.” 

We make these various quotations, out of many 
more, simply to show that there is indisputably such 
a measure of uncertainty and disagreement as to the 

* Sunday, p. 418. 

| Sabbath Essays, 1879. 



A PRIMEVAL SABBATH. 


289 


existence of an actually observed Patriarchal Sabbath, 
as to make it impossible to bring it forward as an ex¬ 
ample capable of binding men’s consciences now. The 
first three chapters have, we trust, made it abundantly 
clear, that it is also as unnecessary, as it is impossible, 
so to employ so doubtful an example, however ready 
we should be to cordially congratulate the patriarchs 
— if we may be pardoned the expression — upon 
the possession of something in their day, anal¬ 
ogous— according to their simple, free, and wan¬ 
dering pastoral life, laden as it was with opportunities 
for contemplation—to the Lord’s Day of the Chris¬ 
tian Dispensation. 

Let it not be forgotten that we do not say that 
there was not a weekly Sabbath from Adam to Moses. 
There may have been one, and we hope there was 
one. We only say, as before, that the Lord’s Day of 
the present Christian Dispensation, preserved by the 
Church of Christ, in which he is present and will be 
to the end (Matt, xxviii: 20), does not stand in need 
of a Patriarchal Sabbath as the ground, by way of 
authoritative example, of its obligation. 

The promise that the Seed of the woman should 
bruise the serpent’s head may have been quietly con¬ 
templated with devout wonder in the pastoral life of 
the patriarchs; and such observance may have been the 
germ of the Lord’s Day. But we of to-day who have 
long had what prophets and kings desired in vain to 
see, can not ground our Christian usages on the dim 
expectations of the long-distant and immeasurably 




290 


THE SUNDAY QUESTION. 


outgrown past, but, rather, on the deeds of him who, 
on the first day of the week, triumphed over death 
and the grave, and thus opened unto us the door of 
everlasting life; and so made the keeping of the 
Lord’s Holy Day by all his followers a sacred obli¬ 
gation forever, and a memorial to all generations. 




















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